































YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 



Copyright, 1923, By 
FRED G. NEUMAN 


YOUTH 

AND OTHER THINGS 


BY 

FRED G. NEUMAN 

Author of “Story of Paducah,” “Paducahans in 
History,” Etc. 



PADUCAH, KENTUCKY. 

YOUNG PRINTING COMPANY 
1923 


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PREFACE 

These essays were originally written for publication in news¬ 
papers and never with a thought of their use in any other form. 
The series ran in the Paducah dailies along with other articles of 
similar nature, save one or two which are here presented for the 
first time. 

The chapters on newspaper errors and ambiguous sen¬ 
tences met with more than ordinary favor, and they are reprinted 
at the solicitation of friends on newspapers and magazines through¬ 
out the country who in large measure supplied the material. 

Several chapters have undergone slight revision and lengthen¬ 
ing both of which tasks could be carried on indefinitely. In the 
main they stand as they appeared in the Columns of the Paducah 
newspapers, which have already reprinted several and offered other 
encouragement that prompted their publication as here found. 

FRED G. NEUMAN. 

Paducah, Ky., December 5, 1923. 




CONTENTS 


Page 

CHAPTER I 

YOUTH . 11 

CHAPTER II 

NEGLECTING OUR WORTHY . 16 

CHAPTER III 

HOW PRAISE IS BESTOWED .... 23 

CHAPTER IV 

BOORS AND FRIENDSHIP. 28 

CHAPTER V 

PRETENSE AND LEARNING. 37 

CHAPTER VI 

THE GIFT OF MEMORY . 43 

CHAPTER VII 

REPARTEE . 49 

CHAPTER VIII 

FUN IN NEWSPAPER ERRORS. 56 

CHAPTER IX 

PHRASES THAT CONFUSE . 67 

CHAPTER X 

CHEER UP AT FORTY! . 74 

















CHAPTER I 


YOUTH 


“'How beautiful is youth! how bright it gleams 
With its illusions, aspirations, dreams!” 

A GENUINE surprise awaits that person who has never 
considered Youth’s contributions to the happiness of man. In 
every field young men and women have given of their brains and 
strength to fortify the glory of each and every age, nor can one 
gaze in any direction lest he behold the achievements of those 
for whom life’s shadows still fall to the west. Recently Samuel 
Rzesrewski, eight years old, defeated twenty chess experts at West 
Point Military Academy and nine-years-old Hilda Conkling gave the 
world her first book of poems. At seventeen, Jafleha Heifetz the 
Russian violinist made his debut in this country. Fritz Kreisler 
was eleven when he toured Europe and played before king and 
queen. The most popular hero of the World War so far as 
America is concerned was within the draft age—Sergeant Rork, 
whom shouts acclaim and praise rewards. Practically every man 
that stood in the American lines at Chateau-Thierry and on the 
Aisne, and in the Meuse-Argonne and Somme sectors, was under 
thirty years of age. 

What is true today was true yesterday. Horace Greeley 
spelled every word in the English language at the age of seven and 
Socrates mastered Greek at six. It has been truthfully said that 
had Benedict Arnold died a score of years sooner than he did, 
he would not have suffered the ignominy of a traitor and the 
shame which maturer years brought. Though he was forty-three 
years of age when elected head of the Continental Army, George 
Washington went as Virginia’s envoy to the council of Indian 
chiefs on the Ohio at twenty-one and at twenty-four he was ap¬ 
pointed second in command of the army designed to march to the 
same river. At twenty-seven Napoleon took command of the army 
of Italy and he was still under forty when, as one biographer says, 
he was “lord of lords and king of kings.” He was “too old” at 
Waterloo at forty-seven. At thirty Lord Cleve was conquering 


o 


11 


12 YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 

India for the British crown and at thirty-three Alexander the 
Great gave up the ghost. Joan of Arc was nineteen when malice 
and stupidity “took care” of her. Nathan Hale 

“A youth to whom was given 

So much of earth, so much of heaven” 

twenty-one when he declared “I regret that I have but one life to 
give for my country!” At twenty-seven George Rogers Clark con¬ 
quered the Great Northwest. 

Like a chamois hunter full of life, and vigor, and courage, 
supported by the spear of his genius—potent as Ithuriel’s—Prentiss 
at thirty sprang up the steeps and leaped over the chasms on his 
way to the mount where the “proud temple” shines above cloud 
and storm. In his twenty-eighth year the remarkable genius of 
Patrick Henry was discovered; at that age the Virginian burst 
forth suddenly and became the most eloquent public speaker of 
his generation. 

Twenty-two million people journeyed to Chicago for the 
Columbian exposition, witnessing spectacles of every conceivable 
nature. Doubtless many have almost forgotten the dazzling dis¬ 
plays, but who should say a ride on the giant Ferris wheel at that 
celebration was not an experience worth recalling for many years 
to come? That engineering marvel came from the brain of a 
man thirty-five years of age and it bears his name. 

Perhaps nowhere does the young intellect show to greater 
advantage than in literature, and it is worthy of mention that in 
the republic of letters youth on occasion has outdistanecd doting 
age. William Cullen Bryant never equalled in his later years his 
earlier efforts. “Thanatopsis,” for instance, was written when the 
youthful poet was seventeen. Diffident and reserved, he threw 
the poem in a drawer where it remained six years. In 1821 
Bryant’s first book of poems was printed and if there is anything 
finer in his complete works than “Thanatopsis” or “To a Water- 
fowl,” both of which appear in this volume, the reading public 
has been unable to find it. 

The late Colonel Roosevelt wrote the early chapters of the 
“War of 1812” while at college, and Dr. Lewis in his biography of 
the late author-president says it ranks next in merit to his more 
pretentious “Winning of the West.” The best essays of Thomas 
Babbington Macauley were written before he attained thirty and 
at that age Shakespeare had dashed off “The Merchant of Venice” 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


13 


and “Richard III.” Six years later the Bard of Avon pushed aside 
“Hamlet” and “Julius Caesar.” At twenty-five, Louvet, trained 
for the bar, abandoned the profession and wrote “Faublas.” Edgar 
Allen Poe was under voting age when his first book of poems came 
from the press; the author of “The Raven” died at forty. 

Can you conveive of an individual reading 20,000 books in a 
lifetime? He must be a bookworm, to be sure; and such was 
Henry Thomas Buckle, author of “A History of Civilization” 
whose private library was one of the richest in the world. An 
omnivorous reader, he averaged reading three books a day! Grief 
over the death of his mother accentuated his own and he laid 
down the burdens of life at forty-one. 

In the Congress of thirteen states which met at Philadelphia 
to band the whole under one constitution was Charles Pinckney, 
the youngest member and most striking in ability and eloquence. 
It was his masterly intellect which found the secret of government 
for the republic at a time when the wisest hesitated in putting 
forward a plan to make the nation great and keep it great for 
generations to come. Pinckney was twenty-seven years old when 
he presented his draft, which was adopted after a gigantic battle 
of minds and wills. 

“Ah! youth is wonderful! 

All possibilities are in its hands.” 

Robert Burns passed away in his thirty-eighth year after 
leaving to posterity such masterpieces as “The Cotter’s Saturday 
Night” and “Highland Mary,” the latter considered by no small 
number the greatest short poem ever written. The Scottish 
“plowboy” had two years more of “earthly pain and pleasure” than 
Lord Byron, who found a grave at thirty-six. In all your reading 
it is safe to gamble that you have never come across anything 
more gripping, more terribly fascinating than Byron’s “Battle of 
Waterloo.” 

James Fennimore Cooper wrote “The Spy,” “The Pioneers” 
and “The Pilot” before reaching thirty-five, and Stephen Collins 
Foster at twenty-six wrote “My Old Kentucky Home,” the only 
song by which he is remembered. John Keats died in exile at 
Rome when twenty-five and at the same age Goethe was world 
famous. Barely past his twenty-first year but already widely 
celebrated for his attainments, Philip Melanchton was called to 
the professorship of Greek at Wittenberg during the Reformation, 


14 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


and Luther was only thirty-four when he nailed his Ninety-five 
Thesis to the Castle Church door four hundred years ago. 

Don John of Rustria won Lapanto at twenty-five, and had it 
not been for the jealousy of Philip, the next year he would have 
been emperor of Mauritania. Gaston de Foix was only twenty-two 
when he stood a victor on the plain of Ravenna. The 
Duke of Wiemar answered death’s insistent call at thirty- 
six. Cortes was little more than thirty when he gazed upon the 
golden cupolas of Mexico. Disraeli says that when Maurice of 
Saxony died at thirty-two, “all Europe acknowledged the loss of 
the greatest captain and the profoundest statesman of the age.” 

John de Medici was a cardinal at fifteen, and, Guicciardini tells 
us, baffled with his craft Ferdinand of Aragon himself. He was 
pope, as Leo X was, at thirty-seven. Pascal wrote a great work at 
sixteen, and died at thirty-seven. Raphael, who painted the 
palaces of Rome, died at the same age. Richelieu was secretary 
of state at thirty-one, and Bolingbroke was far from being old 
when he served as a minister. Grotius was in practice, at 
seventeen, and attorney-general at twenty-four. 

Conde was only twenty-two when he won the Battle of 
Rocroi. Gustavus Adolphus died at thirty-eight. Ney rose to be 
a Marshal of France before he was forty. Prince Murat was 
thirty-eight at the victory of Jena. Charles XII conquered Denmark 
at the age of eighteen. Hoche and Marceau both died before they 
were thirty. 

The cultured, brilliant, magnetic, and brave Camille 
Desmoulins was thirty when he sprang upon a table in the Palais- 
Royal and harangued the mob which stormed the Bastille. 
Tennyson’s first book of poems was published in his twenty-third 
year and Franklin’s Almanac made its initial appearance when its 
common-sense author vras twenty-six. Darwin, the English natural¬ 
ist, and Hegel, the German philosopher, were famous long before 
life’s evening star succeeded the bright sun. Thomas Jefferson 
wrote the Declaration of Independence at thirty-two and at thirty 
Adolph Thiers completed his ten-volume “History of the French 
Revolution,’’ the first exhaustive acount by one who had not been 
an eye-witness of the event. Irvin S. Cobb w r as managing editor 
of the Paducah News-Democrat at nineteen. 

Oscar Wilde died at an age when liije insurance companies 
today would be glad to take the “risk.” Schiller and Musset began 
their literary careers at eighteen and Emerson’s staT rose at an 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


15 


age not far past one and twenty. Thomas Chatterton took his 
own life in a garret before reaching twice nine, and Persy Bysshe 
Shelley was thirty when he ceased to breathe. Dante Gabriel 
Rosetti wrote “The Blessed Damosel” at eighteen and “The 
Burden of Nineveh’’ at twenty-one. At twenty-six John Milton was 
master of eveTy technical resource of poetry. Pope’s career as a 
man of letters began when he was twenty-one. James Whitcomb 
Riley was twenty-two when he wrote “An Old Sweetheart of Mine” 
and still under thirty when “The Old Swimmin’ Hole” was 
published. 

And is that all? Ge-rate gudeness! At thirty-one Daniel 
Webster was holding his own with such intellectual Titans as 
Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun. At three and twenty William 
Pitt, the great commoner, was chancellor of the exchequer and at 
a like age Charles James Fox resigned the office of lord of the 
admiralty and—but history is full of Youth’s marvelous achieve¬ 
ments, the wonderful contributions to the world’s progress and 
development its young men and women have given. 

History is a brilliant record of Youth’s achievements, if we 
but knew it. 


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16 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


CHAPTER II 

NEGLECTING OUR WORTHY 


I T GIVES one a sad sense of man’s ingratitude and lack of 
appreciation to reflect that of the world’s greatest benefactors, 
some were neglected in their declining years, while others found 
a nameles grave. In myriad ways we honor the dead—with song 
and story, the marble statue, the memorial celebration, the 
studied oration, the tribute of perishable flowers; but no marble 
reaches skyward over the grave of Nathan Hale, nor does violet 
blue not where lies John Paul Jones. No! We. are an emotional 
people, praising our benefactors while living and forgetting them 
when dead. One day it is the voice of lamentation, “Tne king 
is dead!” The next, the voice of applause, “Long live the king!” 
Shakespeare very nearly described man’s caiousness when he 
had Anthony remark, “But yesterday the word of Caesar might 
might stood against the world; now lies he there and none so 
poor to do him reverence.” 

Years after the Washington monument was begun it remained 
unfinished. Unless the Garfield and McKinley memorials at 
Cleveland and Canton had been erected while the nation’s grief 
was fresh it would have been impossible to arouse popular 
enthusiasm at a later period. The Jefferson Davis memorial has 
never been completed. There is no imposing shaft to honor the 
memory of President Roosevelt. 

The same neglectful spirit is evidenced toward saving 
shrines that should be sacred to the memory of departed worthies. 
The thought of how soon the world forgets, prompted an early 
movement for a plan to save the home place of the late Theodore 
Roosevelt. A spirit of veneration for the mighty should rescue 
Monticello, even as Sagamore Hill was saved two years ago; for 
the homestead of Thomas Jefferson is now sadly desecrated in 
its use as a private residence by strangers to his blood. Every 
Kentuckian remembers the campaign to salvage old Hickory 
Hill, the site where Stephen Collins Foster lived and wrote “My 
Old Kentucky Home.” Sergeant Alvin York was the greatest hero 
America knew in the world upheaval; yet he was obliged to acept 


YOUTHANDOTHERTHINGS 17 

contributions from private sources to meet notes on his farm in 
Tennessee. 

No better instance can be shown of indifferent toward our 
eminently worthy than the shameful burial given John Paul Jones. 
Though 

“There sounds not to the trumpet of Fame 

The echo of a nobler name,” 

the bravest seaman that ever fought under the Stars and Stripes 
has an unmarked grave. His life reads like a daring tale, his 
naval exploits constitute the most remarkable in point of extra¬ 
ordinary success and phenomenal courage in the annals of history. 
Consider the monumental audacity displayel by Jones during the 
great sea battle fought within sight of the British coast the 
evening of September 25, 1779, and you will have a key to his 
making. 

Through the darkness the British captain, Pearson, called 
out, “Have you struck your colors?” The voice of Jones on the 
sinking Bon Homme Richard came back, “I have not yet begun 
to fight!”—reminding one of Major Stephen Elliott’s reply to 
the Federal request for surrender of Fort Sumter, “Come and 
take it!” Jones spent his last days in Paris, where he died in 
17 92. The French assembly, took official notice of his death, 
selected a deputation of twelve members to attend the burial and 
provided a military escort to follow the body of the immortal 
warrior to his grave. Gouverneur Morris, the American minister, 
issued orders for the cheapest, most private funeral, nor did he 
pay the last sad token of respect by being present when the dead 
hero was laid to rest. Carrying out the cold-hearted minister’s 
orders, Jones was so obscurely buried that his grave cannot be 
found, and could not be marked with a monument if Congress 
so wished to mark the spot. 

Two tragedies in the Revolution will ever be recalled with 
sadness—Major Andre, of the British army, and Nathan Hale, of 
the American, both executed as spies. Major Andre was led to 
the gallows October 2, 1780, near Tarrytown, N. Y., where he 
was captured. His remains were buried close to the spot where 
he suffered, but in 1821 they were disinterred and removed to 
Westminster Abbey. While the English spy’s body reposes in 
a cathedral, the burial spot of the American patriot is 
unknown, although there is a cenotaph in City Hall Park, New 


18 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


York. We remember the brilliant young captain’s dying exclama¬ 
tion, “I regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.” 
President Dwight, of Yale, voiced the general sorrow: 

“Thus while fond virtue wishes in vain to save. 

Hale, bright and generous, found a hapless grave.” 

Robert Morris of Philadelphia was a signer of the Declaration 
of Independence and a financier. During the Revolution when 
the soldiers needed clothing, the last dollar spent, when General 
Washington was in despair, Morris, from his own private 
resources furnished means to carry on the struggle. “Except 
for the sums raised by Robert Morris,” says Historian John 
Fiske, “Washington could not have saved the country.” Morris’ 
long devotion to the public interests caused embarrassment in his 
business, and his closing years were passed in .gloom instead of 
honored retirement. 

“Blow, blow, thou winter wind, 

Thou are not so unkind 
As man’s ingratitude.” 

During the time of Louis XV the Parliament of Paris in 
response to popular clamor judicially murdered Lally-Tollendal, 
the hero of the struggle of France against England in India. 
Returning to France, he was tried for treason, was convicted, was 
sent to the scaffold with a gag in his mouth, and executed with 
every cimcumstance of petty meanness that could break the great 
heart of a brave, proud, and unfortunate man. A few years after 
his death, this same Parliament of Paris reconsidered its former 
decision, and reversed it. But Lally-Tollendal was dead. Yes, 
many a time does the woTld stone a man before it rears a stone 
to his memory. We too often make a laughing stock of a man 
before we take stock in what he says. Had France given Lolly- 
Tollendal, as he asked, one-tenth of the troops wasted to please 
Maria Theresa, he would have saved the French domains. 

In the pages of history one cannot find a more entrancing 
spirit than the young peasant girl Joan of Arc who became the 
commander of armies, the winner of battles, the deliverer of a 
nation. Brooding over the unhappy condition of her country she 
beleived that she heard voices calling her to lead the French to 
victory, and once she headed the rough, hardened soldiers a new 
enthusiasm was instilled in the French and the English were 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


19 


put to flight. Having accomplished her marvelous task, she 
begged the king to let her return to her father’s home among 
the hills where she might again become a shepherd lass. But the 
king refused to let her go; he believed she should win more 
victories, for all France was aglow with enthusiasm over this 
wonderful girl. Again and again, she was engaged with the 
army, and at last fell into the hands of the English. The 
English believed that she was a sorceress, a witch, and con¬ 
demned her to death and burned her at the stake. Not until 1890 
was a fitting memorial erected to her memory at Domremy, her 
birthplace. In 192 0, nearly five hundred years after her frightful 
death, she was formally declared a saint. 

More books have been written about Napoleon than any 
other character since the star dust was strewn through the 
empyrean. In the battles of Marengo and Austerlitz, he supplied 
the world with the synonyms of dazzling success, in Waterloo, 
he gave the world a name for hopeless, overwhelming defeat. At 
27 he was at the head of the Italian campaign; at 40, emperor. 
Banished to Elba, he escaped, returned, lost bloody Waterloo, and 
was taken captive and sent to St. Helena. See the Man of 
Destiny on the lonely crag! A prisoner, he is subjected to every 
insult of which Sir Hudson Lowe is capable. Every bitter weed 
of contempt was thrust the Corsican, who now lived in a cow¬ 
shed. “History will do me justice,” said Napoleon in a dispute 
with the heartless jailer. Even the white face of the dead man, 
the folded hands, the frozen sleep of death, made no appeal to 
his British captoT, who refused to lower the casket inscribed 
“Napoleon.” Thus the greatest of men received an anonymous 
burial! That was in 1821. 

But in 1840 Napoleon’s turn comes. The grave of St. 
Helena is opened; the body is taken to Paris to be entombed 
in the French capital. With a vast outpouring of people, the 
greatest Frenchman is welcomed home. Mourners come in endless 
lines, nor has that procession ended yet. His impress lies upon 
the world forever, though he died a torturous death and was 
committed to every indignity Great Britain could bestow. 

Twenty-six years after Edgar Allen Poe’s death there was 
not a tombstone in the Baltimore Presbyterian cemetery to 
show the burial place of the poet; the grave was wholly 
unmarked. In 1846 a committee of school teachers began raising 
a sum for a tombstone, and ten years later $1,000 had been 


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20 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


raised through entertainment and “generosity.” Through their 
efforts of the existing stone was carved and set up, but the only 
person of note attending the unveiling was Walt Whitman. The 
principal address was made by the figure-head of a Baltimore 
high school. That was the grandest Poe celebration ever held 
in the United 'States. At his burial in 1849 exa'ctly eight persons 
were present, of whom six were relatives. True, Poe was not a 
painfully respectable fellow; he drank what is known as “bottled 
in the barn” and took dope. With all his faults, his gifts are in 
the lead—and the average man would no more think of exchang¬ 
ing Poe’s rare traits for those of the masses than a chancellor would 
throw aside the ermine to demand equal physical rights with a 
sergeant-at-arms. 

The inventor of the sewing machine—that is, a sewing ma¬ 
chine whose threads would stay sewn—was Elias Howe. In 1843 
at the age of 32 he began the work of realizing his dream in 
metal. Through a long series of vicissitudes, including periods of 
dire poverty for himself, his wife and his children, he worked on 
the undertaking which he hoped would make him rich. When 
his model was finally finished, he lacked the money to go to 
Washington to get it patented. After he obtained his rights in 
partnership with a friend, Howe discovered that his countrymen 
would have none of him or his machine—for the time being, at 
least. So he sent his invention to London where it received a 
welcome, but piracy abroad and at home reduced him to direct 
necessities and it was only after a severe struggle that his rights 
were vindicated. His wife died during their stress. His years 
of prosperity were brief, and in 1867 he died in Brooklyn. 

Seventy years ago we knew- little of the Pacific Coast, for 
the Rocky Mountains were a barrier to our western progress. It 
was reserved for Colonel John G. Fremont to clear the w-ay; and 
from 1842, his first expedition, to 1853, his fifth, he made a 
thorough survey of peak and pass, almost starving and freezing, 
writing reports that won medals from the Royal Society of 
London. He was our first and greatest explorer. In return for 
his priceless sacrifice, his land titles in California were disputed, 
and his widows, Jessie Benton, spent her lonely old age in a 
cottage given by the ladies of California. Shame! 

When California was ceded to the United States in 1848 
General John A. Sutter, who had founded the first settlement 
at Sacramento w r as, like Colonel Fremont, in possession of a 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


21 


large tract of land. He had every prospect of continued pros¬ 
perity, but the discovery of gold a year later brought a horde of 
miners to his ranch, and his claim to the property was refused by 
the Supreme Court. Sick in mind and body, the sorrowful old 
man retired to the quiet town if Lititz, Pa., pressed his claim on 
a heartless Congress, and after its refusal for the sixteenth time 
to acknowledge his rights, died in despair at a Washington hotel. 

“Listen, my children, and you shall hear 
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.” 

Revere’s Ride and Sheridan’s Ride, later, were picturesque, 
but they sink into insignificance compared with the five months’ 
ride of Marcus Whitman, October, 1842, to March, 1843, from 
Washington on the Pacific to Washington on the Patomac. There 
is a dispute as to the purpose of the ride, some claiming Rev. 
Whitman made the cross 'country trip with a view to obtaining 
funds to carry on his missionary work in the West. Others, 
however, are certain the purpose was to impress upon President 
Tyler and Daniel Webster the importance of preserving the 
Northwest to this country from the grasp of England. Four 
thousand miles through the dead of winter! Oregon, Washington 
and Idaho were saved. Four years afterward. Whitman was 
massacred by the Indians and only in 1897 was a monument 
raised to his memory! The poet touches upon the delinquency— 

“Slowly wise and meanly just 
To buried merit raise the tardy bust ” 

Long before John Brown or Colonel Ellsworth, Elijah 
Lovejay was the first sacrifice in the slavery excitement. His 
murder at Alton, Ill., by a mob in 1837 called to the anti-slavery 
crusade two of its greatest orators—his brother Owen, and 
Wendell Phillips. Only a pine headboard, bearing the initials 
“E. L.” marked the grave of the martyr. But see the truth of 
poetic justice! In 1897, sixty years afterward, a towering monu¬ 
ment was erected to his heroic memory. 

One frequently hears the name of Charles Goodyear asso¬ 
ciated with that of rubber; in all conscience, it is quite 
synonymous with certain widely advertised products. Crude 
rubber came from South Africa and was well known to commerce 
for 300 years, but it was only in 183 4 that Charles Goodyear 
began his experiments for converting it into shoes and other 



22 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


articles. After repeated failures and long struggle, he obtained 
his patent for vulcanizing rubber in 1844, but a renewal in 
1857 was refused on account of the opposition of schemers who 
had grown rich by infringing on his rights. Poor old Goodyear! 
Although he died in debt, he at least had the satisfaction of see¬ 
ing his grand discovery in five hundred various applications. 

How do you think the poor patients felt in the dentist’s 
chair or on the operating table in the old times,, when sleeping 
potions were unknown? Well, they had to grin and bear it. 
After many experiments Dr. William Green, a Boston dentist, 
in 1846, administered ether to a patient from whose jaw Dr. 
John C. Warren removed a tumor. As usual, other men dis¬ 
puted his discovery. A bill giving him $100,000 as a national 
testimonial failed in Congress. His business was ruined by 
prolonged opposition. Both Dr. James Young Sampson, of 
Edinburgh, and Dr. Oliver Wendell Homes, of Boston, awarded 
the discoverey to Dr. Morton. 

“This mournful truth is everywhere confessed, 

Slow rises worth by poverty depressed.” 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


23 


CHAPTER III 

HOW PRAISE IS BESTOWED 

I N THE fields of literature, art, science and trade it not 
infrequently occurs that a particular discovery or invention, 
an especially popular picture or book, story or poem, affixes itself 
as a natural complement to a certain world-wide name. Gallileo, 
Newton, Watt, Franklin, Morse, Marconi, Edison: a definite term 
will rush to mind directly one of these names is heard. With the 
mention of Millet’s name, the “Angelus” comes to mind. However 
familiar we may be with the writings of Thomas Carlyle, the 
“French Revolution” is sure to be the first associated with his 
name; yet this taciturn Scot’s “Heroes and Hero Worship” and 
“Sartor Resartus” shine today, very stars in our literary skies. 
H. G. Wells will go down in history as the author of “The 
Outline of History,” though the prolific and versatile writer has 
produced forty volumes. Irvin 9. Cobb is best known for his “Old 
Judge Priest” stories, of which there are thirty, and his eminently 
successful “Speaking of Operations—”, a slender volume chock-full 
of humor. Oliver Wendell Holmes wished to be remembered by 
“The Chambered Nautilus”; he is, along with “The Autocrat of 
the Breakfast Table.” 

Victor Hugo’s fame rests almost wholly on one book—“Les 
Miserables.” Payne wrote many songs besides “Home, Sweet 
Home,” but we always think of these melancholy lines in speaking 
of the homeless author; he never had a home, yet wrote the best 
tribute thereto, just as James Whitcomb Riley, who never married, 
wrote the tenderest message in praise of man’s greatest earthly 
possession—“An Old Sweetheart of Mine.” The late Indiana 
bard himself is known for only a handful of verses—“The Old 
Swimmin’ Hole,” “Knee-deep in June,” “It’s Got to Be”—do you 
know any more? S. F. Smith wrote many hymns, yet he is 
invariably alluded to as “the author of ’America’.” Francis 
Scott Key is to everyone “the man who wrote ‘Star-Spangled 
Banner’.” Stephen Collins Foster is popular but for one song; 
he wrote others, but “My Old Kentucky Home” is far and away 
the only worth-while thing he dashed off. Her own countrymen 


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24 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


associate Julia Ward Howe’s name almost wholly with one poem, 
“The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” struck off at white heat 
early in the Civil War. 

So, however much a man may accomplish, he is usually 
known for but one particular achievement. A pertinent example 
is that ol! 'Elbert Hubbard, author, lecturer, farmer, banker. 
The late sage of East Aurora is referred to as the author of 
“A Message to Garcia,” a tract of fifteen hundred words with 
a circulation of more than forty million. Did the Fra ever 
write anything else worth a lullaby? Comparatively few people 
care for biography, though Elbert Hubbard could enliven a 
skeleton and make dead men walk, so wonderful was his genius 
as exhibited in his “Little Journeys.” His description of the 
Titanic disaster is one of the most gripping, most terribly fascin¬ 
ating accounts of any horror ever penned. Elbert Hubbard—oh, 
he wrote “A Message to Garcia,” as anyone will tell you. 

“Paradise Lost” is synnonymous with John Milton, who also 
wrote a sequel thereto, “Paradise Regained.” Of course every- 
boly has heard of “Paradise Lost,” but we daresay the reader 
in common with his neighbor has never read the sonorous 
catalogues. The whole book is simehow as forbidding as its 
title, though almost anyone will boastingly say he has read 
“part of it.” Milton enjoys ahe highest reputation as a prose 
writer, but not everyone knows that in a collection of authors 
made a generation after his death his name was not included 
among the poets! If you would read one of his earlier and 
impeccable poems, read “II Penseroso.” 

In the va,st treasure-house of literature it would be impossible 
to find a more exquisite gem, both of thought and expression, 
than John Keats’ “Ode to a Grecian Urn.” All the world acclaims 
his fame on merit of this one poem, it would seem, quite forget¬ 
ting his odes “to Autumn” and “To a Nightingale,” In the 
latter of which he tells of that voice heard “in ancient days by 
emperor and king.” Reviewers in Keats’ day were unjustly cruel 
to him, and the poet is said to have died broken-hearted believing 
that he had missed the mark of literary renown. Sidney Lanier 
is known for “Tampa Robins” and “The Marshes of Glynn.” 

“Crossing the Bar” attaches itself as snugly to Tennyson as a 
sparkling gem to milady’s finger—the English speaking world 
has learned the beauty and depth of both, the poetical cameo 
and the bright stone. But in all your reading have you ever come 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


25 


across anything of finer sentiment than “Enoch Arden?” 
Tennyson also wrote “Idyls of the King” and “Queen Mary,” but 
nobody cares a rap for these or “Enoch Arden” so long as 

“Crossing the Bar” survives. 

In speaking of Thackeray we think of “Vanity Fair” as 

unconsciously as we bat the eye or fall in love. “Faust” and 
Goethe are inseparable; so is Dickens and “A Tale of Two Cities.” 
Benjamin Franklin is generally known for his common-sense as 
expressed in “Poor Richard’s Almanac” and Geoffrey Chaucer 
lives in the lives of many only for his “Canterbury Tales.” The 
world remembers Omar Khayyam but for one poem, “The 
Rubaiyat.” Blanco Write is singularly known for “Night,” per¬ 
haps the most beautiful poem in the English language. 

It were superfluous to dilate on the sterling merits of 

“Robinson Crusoe,” Daniel Defoe’s masterpiece written at the 

age of sixty. No one would—could—detract therefrom, but if 
you would enjoy a little while do read Defoe’s “True-Born 
Englishman.” In these days when so many of us pride ourselves 
on lineage of which we know aught, when the fanciful “dude” 
boasts of his “stock” and idle daughter makes much ado over 
her “blood,” then tries to marry a foreiger that her children 
may be reared subjects instead of sovereigns—yes, do read what 
Defoe says where 

“Great families of yesterday they show, 

And lords, whose parents were the Lord knows who.” 

Did you know that Tom Moore, sweetest Irish singer, was 
paid $15,000 for “Lalla Rookh” and rested his growing game 
upon it? Strange how the world today neglects the epic and 
honors Moore for the less pretentious “Irish Melodies.” The most 
strenuous work of Moore’s creative faculty is cast aside, is 
“misjudged,” as Michael Monahan, one of the most brilliant critics 
in the nation today, says. 

It would seem that frequently the fate of a literary worker 
is dependable upon caprice. the curious manner in which the 
public, the reading public, allots credit to authors would indicate 
this. Again, a writer does not always know his best work any 
more than a minister of the gospel knows his most effective 
discourse. For instance, Walter Savage Landor toiled incessantly 
on “Gebir,’ which nobody reads; but no lover of literature has 
overlooked his simple lines of grief on the untimely death of 


o 


26 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


beautiful Rose Aylmer, a choice bloom as pretty as her name. 
Here is the poem: 

“Ah, what avails the sceptred race, 

Ah, what the form divine! 

What every virtue, every grace! 

Rose Aylmer, all were thine. 

“Rose Aylmer, whom the wakeful eyes 
May weep, but never see. 

A night of memories and of sighs 
I teonsecrate to thee.” 

No student of the divine in man has missed acquaintance 
with Edgar Allen Poe’s “Annabel Lee.” Another poem, however, 
couples itself to the South’s greatest singer—“The Raven.” To 
be sure, Poe’s poems comprise a rather modest volume, but this 
genius wrote literary criticism and several shoTt stories which it 
were superlative folly to let die. “The Black Cat,” “The Tell-tale 
Heart,” “The Purloined Letter,” these are pure water from 
Pierian spring, choice fish from Helicon. Kipling’s “Phantom 
Rickshaw” is a splendid mystery story, but it no moTe compares 
with the American’s “Flail of the House of Usher” than a lily with 
a hollyhock. Speaking of mystery stories, did you ever read 
Ambrose Bierce’s “Tales of Mystery?” He is known for having 
written little else worth while. Recapitulating, it has been said 
that the best poem Poe ever threw off was “Eldorado”; it is 
the least noticed. 

Robert Burns, with a fine vein of genius, cast off “For a’ 
That and a’ That,” for which everyone knows him; it gained for 
him a niche in the temple of literature. The Scottish plowboy 
also wrote “Cotter’s Saturday Night” and other immortal songs, 
the original fragments recently bringing $15,000 from the coffers 
of J. Pierpont Morgan, according to te newspapers. “Bobby” 
Burns, however, died in neglect—was as poor of material 
wealth as Poe, who when his wife lay dying brought her the 
family cat to add to her warmth in the absence of blankets. 
A few years ago Poe’s “Tamerlane” netted $2,200 in the first 
edition. Burns’ “Highland Mary” belongs in the same category 
with Gray’s “Elegy in a Country Churchyard” and Prentice’s 
“At My Mother’s Grave.” 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


27 


Henry Wadsworth Longfellow has been called America’s 
greatest poet, though it seems a bit previous to confer such a 
honor. Before he was gathered to his fathers Longfellow prob¬ 
ably attached more importance to “Evangeline” than his “Psalm 
of Life,” yet the publi'c today reverses the poet’s opinion and 
declaims the rhymy verses wherever the English language is 
spoken. “Nightfall” is another of Longfellow’s famous poems, so 
is “The Reaper”; but there is no denying “A Psalm of Life” is 
the first thought of when his name is mentioned. 

Charles Dickens’ “Pickwick Tales,” “American Travel Notes” 
and other voluminous writings are found in fewer homes that 
one might think, but what home does not possess the English 
novelist’s “Christmas Carol?” See how Dickens’ more ambitious 
efforts aTe sedulously avoided while his carols melt ever and 
increasing hearts! 



28 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


CHAPTER IV 

BOOKS AND FRIENDSHIP 

S OMEONE has said no person can be truly educated or sucessful 
in life unless the reading of books occupied a certain part of 
that individual’s life. With few exceptions, the statement is 
correct—only it might be added that along with the education 
and success a degree of happiness beyond price Tewards the 
person of books. 

Daniel Webster said his opportunities for acquiring an educa¬ 
tion were very limited, but he significantly amended that remark 
by saying he had the good fortune to be supplied with useful 
books and these he confesses were responsible for the wisdom he 
accumulated—not the school. Henry Clay is credited with saying: 
“A wise mother and good books enabled me to succeed in life.” 
Joseph Addison says books are “the legacies the great leave to 
mankind,” and Frederick Harrison states the reader is free to 
approach the inmost minds of men, that he “needs no introduc¬ 
tion to the greatest and he stands on no ceremony with them.” 
A wise man has said: ‘‘Show me the books in a house and I 
will tell you the culture of the occupants.” A book is a mark 
of intelligence. 

Gold certainly lures its multitudes, but books also lure 
their lordly company of admirers. Next to a very few chosen 
friends, books are the dearest and most helpful of companions. 
They are so human in their gentle fellowship. Quietly and 
unobstrusively they bring the very best of the past centuries— 

“Your never failing friends are they, 

With whom you converse day by day.” 

Books! Ah, they place at one’s side the choicest spirits of 
the ages. They offer such benign comfort, such truthful guidance, 
and such strength and courage when these are most needed. 
They are the wisest of company, far and away the merriest, by 
all odds the most sympathetic. Truly, they are the most inex¬ 
pensive of pleasures. A few books will carry one farther than 
an equal amount of money expended in any other way; when they 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


29 


are once bought the cost is over. Few think of it, but place a 
good book in a poor boy’s hand and he is at once equal in 
advantage to the son of a millionaire. What more than 
Shakespeare can Shakespeare be to anyone? And Shakespeare is 
Shakespeare in a plain cloth binding as much as in the most 
precious of tooled moroco. It is well to consider that while a 
wealthy man can pay others to do his work it is impossible for 
him to get his thinking done for him or to purchase any kind of 
self-culture. 

James Baldwin in the preface to “The Book Lover” says, 
“Book love has ever been my passion.” One does not have to 
be a bibliophile to see how mysteriously books charm, lure and 
throw their spell over the individual, for, as a rich quotation 
finely expressts it, “They are the voices of the distant and the 
dead and make us heirs of the spiritual wealth of past ages.” 
Truly, God be thanked for books, good books. A scholar of the 
middle ages is credited with saying he bought books first, and 
afterwards, if he had any money left, he invested in food and 
clothes. The late Henry Ward Beecher said a library is “not a 
luxury, but one of the necessities of life.” He said a little library 
is an honorable part of a young man’s history. “It is a man's 
duty to have books” said the distinguished preacher. Few men 
knew this better than Beecher. 

One of the magnificent things about these fellows that stand 
upright on the shelves where good taste prevails, is that they 
take the reader to distant lands and into the strange kingdoms. 
It must have been one of the charms of minstrelsy of days gone 
by that it could amuse men to forget their monotonous and dull 
life. The seamy side of life seems just a little less real after 
returning from a pilgrimage with a book. Some book man has 
said it is “a great experience into the continent of books.” How 
often the spellbinding power of a book has given vision, color 
and inspiration to a life which before had been colorless and 
without vision. Where is the young person who has not found 
some book a rfeal philosopher’s stone, wheTe the boy or girl who 
has not been influenced by the printed word in permanent 
form? It was that shining light in American literature, Dr. 
Henry Van Dyke, who said, “I want the books that help me out 
of the vacancy and despair of a frivolous mind.” How magnificent 
this utterance! The mind is enriched and strengthened that is 
lured on and carried away by the chatm of a book. Leigh Hunt 


30 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


said, “I entrench myself in my books equally against sorrow and 
the weather.” It was Longfellow who said of one of his 
characters— 

“Dead he lay among his books, 

And the peace of God was in his looks.” 

Every young person should early acquire the reading habit 
and at every opportunity he or she should assiduously pursue it. 
Time does not hang heavy on the reader’s hands, for there is 
constantly something new to read in a land where more than 
10,000 books are published every year. Fortunate is that person 
who has the time to read a good portion of the new books 
printed annually, not neglecting those already on the market. 

Thomas Buckle, who wrote a history of civilization, had a 
private library of more books than that of many public institutions, 
and read on an average of three ordinary-size books 
a day. Amos R. Wells is an omnivorous reader and 
has a library of more than 10,000 volumes, sixty of which he 
wrote himself. The late Elbert Hubbard was the proud possessor 
of 10,000 books, the author of twenty-five. William King, the 
poet, was said to have prosecuted his studies with such 
intenseness and activity that, at the age of 25 he had read 
over and made remarks upon considerably more than 2 0,000 
books and manuscripts. Pliny the Elder employed a person to 
read to him during his meals, and he never traveled without a 
book and a portable writing desk. Pliny the younger, read upon 
all occasions, whether riding, walking, or sitting—whenever the 
moment’s leisure afforded him an oppo r tunity. His playmates 
tell of Irvin S. Cobb [carrying a book to the theatre where thirty 
years ago he read between the acts. 

On the other hand many persons are what one might call 
slow readers; that is, it requires a longer time for them to 
assimilate facts. F. W. Robertson himself said that it took him 
six months to read a small octavo on chemistry. Harriet 
Martineau often read only a page in an hour. Comte read but 
few books, but thoroughly digested what he did read. 

But no matter whether one reads slowly or rapidly, whether 
it is a passion with him or her or not, every person capable of 
reading should have some books of his own. If one is any sort 
of a reader—that is, reads to any extent—by the time the 2 5th 
year of age is reached the friendly book shelves should boast 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


31 


500 or more good books. There is nothing finer than the realiza¬ 
tion that the voices on one’s shelves call and carry the reader 
away to distant realms and, before the thought comes to the 
reader he or she is on a pilgrimage lured on and piloted by a 
book. It makes one forget for the tim© all sorrow—and the 
weather! The reader returns from the journey to find that the 
sorrow is less heartrending, the weather less tempestuous. Many 
and varied are the voices calling from the shelves of one’s 
library. Many are the hours belonging to him to come and 
marvel in the company of the earth’s best and greatest. 

Penniman, in his volume entitled, “Books and How to Make 
the Most of Them” has this to say: “More remarkable than 
the telegraph or the telephone, a book not only annihilates space, 
but time, and carries the voice of David or Homer across the 
seas of the ages.” How fine! Is not the book one of the 
greatest and highest delights and allurements in the highest 
stage of civilization? Next to man himself in glory and dignity 
comes a book. Then let us congratulate the poor that in our day 
books are so cheap that the laborer in the street might possess 

them. » 

Building up a little library is a question with many persons, 
and it is indeed a problem at times just what books to buy. The 
individual will not go far in library-making before he or she 
learns the meaning of the word “classic,” and will know the 
immense space which separates a book which is a “classic” from 
any book which is not. Biographies of leading men and women, 
the standard histories, and the best poets, essayists, and novelists 
constitute a splendid beginning—a beginning, by the way, beyond 
the average purse if prosecuted too firmly or carelessly. Do not 
buy the complete works of any literary light, save of course 
Shakespeare. There are certain passages even in the Bard of 
Avon’s voluminous output that might be emasculated. But the 
reason for not purchasing the whole output of any writer is 
simply because every writer is dull at times, is “not himself 
always, to borrow a phrase from the sympathetic schoolboy. 
Just as the orator whom one knows to be a heaven-born orator 
sometimes fails to move an audience, just as the expert mechanic 
is awkward now and then, just as the painter’s brush sometimes 
misses the conception and the scluptor’s chisel does not always 
follow his thoughts, even as the master musician occasionally 
makes discord,—so the greatest writer produces uninteresting 


32 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


reading in an off mood. Is this not so? The purchaser who 
needs not look at considerable outlay can purchase the complete 
works of the world’s literary colossi, but once this is begun 
there is scarcely no end to buying, that it becomes the person 
of moderate means to buy discriminately. 

Then the temptation comes to buy sets of reference books, 
especially dictionaries and encyclopedias. These should be 
purchased with the greatest care. They are very expensive, and 
one can expend as much money upon one single work of this 
kind as would purchase a hundred books of more vital reading. 
An encyclopedia will not make a person learned any more than 
a set of carpenter tools will make him a carpenter, or presence of 
culinary instruments metamorphose a giggling newlywed into an 
experienced preparer of food. Of ponderous, heavy reference 
works, buy only what is neded. 

The proper authors to read has often caused one to wonder 
just what is appropriate for a certain mood. When a person has 
done considerable study or what is called “heavy reading,” the 
mind is naturally refreshed with a few pages of humor—a dip 
into Chaucer, Cervantes, Rabelais, Mark Twain or Irvin S. Cobb, 
for instance. After reading the delabored thoughts in the average 
small city newspaper, relief is found in the smoothness of Addison, 
Goldsmith, and Hawthorne, and in the simplicity of Burns, 
Whittier, and Bunyan. But for real common sense with which 
editorials should be fraught, reach for Benjamin Franklin and 
Herbert Kaufman, and the late Elbert Hubbard. In these 
rushing days when so mutoh reason seems lacking, the sincere 
element will find logic in such as Burke and Bacon, elegance in 
Virgil, Milton, and Arnold. 

Do you care for good, indiomatic English? Then enscounce 
yourself in a comfortable rocker with Keats, Tennyson, or 
Emerson’s essays where choice of individual words mounts the 
pinnacle of correct expression. Rhetorical force and clearness 
of expression can be found in Lord Byron and Macauley. For 
melody and pure poetic beauty read Keats, Poe, Lanier, and 
Swineburne. For ethereal beauty, 'Shelley takes the lead, just as 
Milton and Dante are kings in sublimity of conception. For 
loving observation of nature draw away from the din of today 
with Wadsworth, Thoreau, Walton, or the late John Burroughs, 
Jane Austen will hold anyone’s attention, if interest in common 
things is sought. 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


33 


The study of human nature is well supplied by Sharkespeare, 
Balzac, Robert Browning, Dickens, Thackeray and George Eliot; 
for criticism of men and books wander awhile wtih Arnold, Lamb, 
Poe, H. L. Mencken and Michael Monohan. The versatile 
Mencken is the greatest critic this country has produced since 
Poe, and Monohan can put to shame many an American born 
without the brogue. Robert Louis Stevenson and Rudyard Kipling 
are noted for vivacity and Homer and Scott for action. Pathos 
and humar—ah, look to Thackeray and Dickens and Irvin S. 
Cobb. The latter’s “Old Judge Priest” stories are charged with 
both; his little volume “Speaking of Operations—” is declared 
by many the funniest book ever written. 

It was Emerson, the Sage of Concord, who said: “Books 
are the best things, well used; abused, among the worst.” In one 
of the publi'c libraries of New York City a picture catches the eye 
of the entrants and displays a young person surreptitiously 
reading a destructive book; the devil is looking over the reader’s 
shoulder and the pictu r e is called “A Bad Book.” The story is 
told of an American living in India whose book shelves were 
interpolated with unwholesome books. On one ocasion, he 
reached for a bad book and was bitten by a snake which had 
crept into the bookcase—a striking illustration of the danger, 
the evil, lurking within the vulgar. 

A prominent educator discovered his son reading a trashy 
novel and asked why he read a book which he could not quote, 
while a railroad conductor relates an instance of a girl passing 
through the great Canyon indifferent to the magnificence and 
splendor of God’s wonders, her head between the covers of a 
dime novel! A cheap novel is as strengthening to the 
mind as drinking wind out of a toy balloon is to the body. Avoid 
the influence of injurious books, or rubbish. Why wade in the 
mire when there are plenty of parks where one might sit in 
the sun? 

In sharp contrast is the greatest of all books beside the 
unprincipled literature just considered. How the Bible shines 
as a finished literary gem in comparison! 

“A glory gilds the sacred page 
Majestic like the sun; 

It gives a light to every age, 

It gives but borrows none.” 



34 YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 

Carlyle aays, “The Bible is an all man’s book.” It is so 
because as Locke puts it, “It has God for its author, salvation for 
its end, and truth without any admixture of error for its matter; 
it is all pure, all sincere, nothing too much, nor wanting.” It is 
essentially a universal book for all ages, the truest, oldest yet 
newest ever written. Surprising as it may seem, there are many 
well educated persons in America who have never read it 
through, a startlingly large number who know naught of its 
contents, almost nothing of its meaning and import. Lovers of 
literature—real dilettanti of letters—confess a lack of knowledge 
as to the poetry, the song, the eloquence, the history, the 

philosophy of the greatest of all books. When John Bunyan was 
a prisoner in Bedfo r d jail he found solace for his loneliness in 
the companionship of three books, and Freude significantly says, 
“One of these was the Bible, which is in itself a liberal education.” 

Probably the oldest scrap of poetry in existence is the 

Song of the Sword, no doubt commemorative of some primitive 
feud—and it is found in Genesis 4:23. A stirring song of 

righteous vibtory is that of Deborah—“The Marseillaise” and 
the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” do not excel it. The New 
Testament contains the song of the herald angels, “To you is 
born this day a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. Glory ti> 

God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will among men.” 
There have been wonderful singers like Virgil and Homer and 
burning Saphho, Goethe and Schiller and Shakespeare, but how 
they dwindle beside the bards of Scripture! John Milton said 
“There are no songs like the songs of Zion.” 

One of the oldest examples of oratory is Judah’s plea for his 
brothers at the Egyption court—a shepherd at the bar, a stranger 
in a strange land, arraigned with his brothers on a criminal 
charge, the possibility of death confronting them—such were the 
conditions under which Judah presented his argument in their 
behalf, earnest and pathetic almost unto death. Then there is a 
brief adeount of Aaron’s plea for the emancipation of Israel 
before the tyrant Pharaoh—how puny seem the forms of sucn 
abolitionists as Wilberforce and Garrison in the presence of this 
mighty liberator! In view of the subtle hypocrisy and manifest 
wickedness in this self-styled Christian land where one-third of 
the people do not have church connection, it seems quite a 
number have never heeded John the Baptist’s cry in the wilder¬ 
ness, “Repent ye, repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


35 


hand!”—else have never heard it. Stephen courting death while 
exposing the frightful sin of crucifying the Messiah, Peter at 
Pentacost preaching with such simpleness and humility that 
three thousand souls are pricked to the heart and fell sobbing 
at the feet of the Savior, or Paul setting the doctrine of human 
rights in words that were destined to be the foregleam of all 
subsequent manifestoes in behalf of civil freedom—these are 
examples of effective speech that might well be followed by the 
proud in the pulpit, the arrogant on the rostrum. 

Bu tthe crowning eloquence of the Scriptures is that of the 
Master himself, and it is recorded the common people heard Him 
gladly. They “marvelled at the gracious words which proceeded 
out of his mouth,” and in the supreme Book the story is told of a 
Roman guard who was sent with a band to arrest Him; they 
paused to listen, were captivated and returned without the 
prisoner. Then their master inquired why they did not bring 
Him, and the answer was, “Never man spake like this man.” 
Displays of oratory such as these moved Daniel Webster to say, 
“If there is aught of power on my lips it is because of my 
acquaintance with the eloquence of the Scriptures which I learned 
at my mother’s knee.” 

No private or home library is complete without its portion 
of history, and the Bible truly furnishes a treasury of historical 
wealth. It is Teplete with chronicles, full of authentic records 
of events running back to the infancy of time. It is likewise 
fraught with great scientific propositions—biology, ethnology, 
astronomy, geology, zoology are all treated. The Bible is accepted 
as the standard of universal morals, and as a flame of fact 
between Sinai and Olivet one finds the source of world 
jurisprudence and the sanctions of all civil and social peace and 
order. It is a great mind of ideas and inspiration, the Bible is, 
and the deeper one digs the richer and more abundant the ore. 

“This is the field where hidden lies 
The pearl of price unknown, 

The merchant is divinely wise, 

Who makes that pearl his own.” 

The person forming a personal library should dedicate a 
definite part of the home or a room to his or her books, though 
at first it is only a sheflf. Keep the books together, and keep 
them in beautiful order. Do not let them lie aslant on the 


36 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


shelves, thus twisting and racking their binding. Do not let 
them gather dust. Fresh air is the best preventative of books and 
for this reason public libraries have their books in the open, but 
where one has a bookcase the doors should be used. Several 
times a week the books are referred to, and at such times 
fresh air wends itself into the bookcase and between the 
volumes. If the books are not kept in a bookcase, do not hang 
a curtain over them, thus depriving the room of its chief 
ornament and the eyes one of their chief delights. The titles 
should be well displayed, so that they may be readily recognized. 

Finally, one should read his own books in preference to 
other books. The temptation comes to read from the public 
library or books borrowed from a neighbor, but one should 
remember if he or she reads another book it will not be at hand 
to refer to at some future time, and that after use may be the 
valuable part of the reading. A book from one’s own shelves that 
has been read becomes at once a noble friend perpetually at 
one’s side. !No collector of books reads every book he or she 
has, but every reader should read enough to form a speaking 
acquaintanceship with them so that they can be consulted with 
confidence whenever the need arises. 

With this in mind, remember a person is judged by the 
books he or she reads quite as much as by friends and associates. 
What one reads is reflected in what one says. Read good books. 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


37 


CHAPTER V 

PRETENSE AND LEARNING 

T HERE is real humor in the exclamatory statements of so- 
called educated persons, sometimes. Certain remarks attributed 
to them by newspapers are often amusing, especially when we 
remember the person quoted is supposed to be above the average 
intellectually. The fault is not that of the school or college, 
but rather that of the individual. Recall your school days and 
ask yourself how often during the vacation period you opened 
a text-book, whether you ever thought of biology or history during 
the summer season of rest. Many of us must (confess we “went 
through” semester after semester and before the vacation period 
had ended were oblivious of practically all that had been learned 
before, save as one naturally takes on a little wisdom as the 
years pass on. 

Say you are about twenty-seven and out of college or univer¬ 
sity several years. You could not have received a diploma unless 
you had studied history—ancient, modern, and mediaeval. Yet it 
is safe to say that you cannot tell what Melanchthon was—- 
whether he was a painter, a warrior, a diplomat or a dramatic 
poet. Every high school senior studying history as well as 
other subjects has squandered magnificent, golden blocks of time 
if nothing has been retained. It is what you learn and remember 
that counts. The thnigs one learns in youth will prove pearls 
of price in later years, if he is sufficiently wise to store them 
for future use. 

But the matter of considering one’s self educated does not 
take residence in former high school or college men alone; quite 
a few who never saw inside a seat of academic learning style 
themselves well posted—dare give pointers on government to a 
Bismarck or jurisprudence to a Gladstone. A hand-to-mouth 
mental existence on a haphazard diet of newspapers and light 
novels leaves both the lethargic ex-graduate and lazily-inclined 
reader in a quandary if some writer should refer to Huss of 
Wyclif, for the simple reason that the reader had been indolent in 
regard to discipline of the mind. Not every person reads intelli- 


38 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


gently books on important questions affecting his own social, 
physical, intellectual or moral existence. 

Just what constitutes a practical, working knowledge of, say, 
history, is probably a matter of conjecture. There are certain 
basic facts which a person should not only once learn but should 
forever remember. There are many people who could not 
tell for freedom’s sake who John Wesley was, but they would 
know tonight if “Babe” knocked a two-bagger today. Some of 
your acquaintances can talk tennis or billiards, but they are quite 
vague about Catherine II or Peter the Great. Are you up on 
Garibaldi or Oavour, or are you wearing a false front of culture? 
Of course, every American, educated or not, knov;s the date of the 
Declaration of Independence, and has some knowledge of the 
character and deeds of Washington. Yet it is reported that 
someone recently did not know whether it was George Washington 
or Washington Irving who was at Valley Forge, whether Thomas 
Jefferson or Jefferson Davis signed the Declaration of 
Independence! During the World war everybody sang of the 
manner in which Washington crossed the Delaware, but ask your 
companion when he forded the stream and the answer comes not 
trippingly to the tongue. 

Not to know the principal events in history is to deny yourself 
every advantage of intelligent society; it is practically the same 
thing as being without ordinary means of communication. You 
may be an expert mathematician, but at an early date you are 
going to find that while it is not necessary to remember the 
binominal theorem or the algebraic formula for the contents of a 
circle, you should at least have a formal acquaintance with Julius 
Caesar, Hannibal, Charlemagne, Martin Luther, Queen Elizabeth, 
Louis XIV and Napoleon—and a dozen or so others. 

An educated person must speak the language of educated 
people, so he must be able to give approximately the year of 
Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul, the Battle of Tours, the Crowning of 
Charlemagne, the Great Crusade, the Fall of Constantinople, 
Magna Charter, the Battle of Crecy, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 
the Spanish Armada, Fall of the Bastille, the Battle of Waterloo 
and the Louisiana Purchase. Can you tell when or why the 
Seven Years’ War, the Thirty Years’ War or the Hundred Years’ 
War took place? Apart from their names the average high 
school graduate knows practically nothing about Gustavus Adolphus, 
Catherine de Medici or Camille Desmoulins—probably knew, but 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 39 

has forgotten. Who knows when printing was invented—before 
or after the Reformation? When was that? 

At a dinner given in Louisville not long ago somebody 
mentioned Conrad II. One of the guests hazarded the opinion 
that he had died in the year 1330. This would undoubtedly 
have passed muster but for a learned-looking person farther 
down the table who deprecatingly remarked: “I do not like to 
correct you, but I think Conrad the Second died in 133 7!” The 
impression created on the assembly cannot be overstated. Later 
in the smoking room a friend ventured to compliment the wise 
one, saying, “Why, I never even heard of Conrad the Second!” 
“Nor I either,” he answered shamelessly, though the assembly 
thought him the best read person there. Considering that 
nobody at the dinner could guess nearer than 3 00 years when the 
king-emperor gave up the ghost, one might guess the intellectual 
equipment of that brilliant gathering. 

Nor is this nonchalance toward knowlede confined entirely 
to an ignorance of history. Take literature—the classics and 
the literary immortelles. Shakespeare is to a large number a 
closed book; that is to say, as someone put it, the “greatest 
wirter America ever produced!” The Brotherhood of Educated 
Man has lay members who never dipped into Chaucer, Kant, 
Shopenhauer or Keats. 

The dean of Radcliffe College who happened to be sitting 
behind two of her graduates while attending a performance 
several years ago of Parker’s deservedly popular play, “Disraeli,’ 
overheard one of them say to the other: “You know, I couldn’t 
remember whether Disraeli was in the Old or the New Testament; 
and I looked in both and couldn’t find him in either!” Which 
recalls an incident in a Texas newspaper office eight years ago 
when a staff member said to a group discussing poetry, “I have 
‘The Rubaiyat.’ ” One stepped forward. “No you haven’t,” he 
said. “You simply have a bad cold!” 

A good many younger and older folks who can play a 
winning lead in Five Hundred and argue earnestly that we must 
have a protective tariff to keep prices from coming down, are not 
sure that stillicide is not a ^crime and the Book of Ruth a 
biography of “Babe.“ The delinquency is not a violation of law, 
but a misfortune, like that of the man who thought Sophocles 
was something to eat and Pterodactyl a new style of player 
piano. .It may be information to some to learn that Gibbon’s 


40 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


“'Rome” is not from the pen of the late Cardinal. In a 
neighboring state a person was found who thought “Victor 
Hugo” was written by Les Miserables—and he pronounced it 
“Less Miserabells!” To prove this is not an isolated though 
horrible example, a member of the New York legislature thought 
Dante was a baseball player. 

Please do not laugh. The most illustrious example of 
dazzling ignorance was supplied by an august senator of the 
United States during the hearings in the steel strike. William 
Z. Foster was on the witness stand, a self-educated man who had 
risen from poverty and ignorance to leadership in a great labor 
movement and the knowledge of several languages. Senator 
Thomas Sterling of South Dakota was asking questions, trying 
to tangle the witness. “What is your theory of government?” 
the senator asked Foster. “It is about the same as that of 
Lester F. Ward,” was Foster’s reply. “Who is Lester F. Ward?” 
asked the senator. That questions is about the same as if in a 
congress of biology someone had asked “Who is Charles Darwin?” 
For Lester F. Ward is America’s greatest sociologist, the peer 
of Herbert Spencer in that field. Ward’s “Pure Sociology” was 
an undiscovered island in Senator Sterling’s mental geography. 

The other week a young woman went into a book store and 
asked for a copy of “The Pilgrim’s Progress.” As the bookseller 
turned to look over his shelves, she added: “I should like to 
have an edition with a picture of the Landing of the Pilgrims.” 
She was a school teacher and she wanted to show the picture 
to her class. She thought Bunyan’s work must be a history of 
the Mayflower trip, though almost anyone could have told her a 
picture of the Pilgrims’ landing would have been as much out of 
place in Bunyan’s famous work as a Holstein in a ceramic 
emporium. 

An incident is related where a gentleman from Massachusetts 
was arguing in the lower house in favor of women’s rights. In 
citing an authority he said “Go to Ibsen.” The next day a 
representative replied that he had searched a gazetteer and an 
atlas of the world, “and I desire to state emphatically there is 

no such place.” A congressman—or was it a senator?_is 

credited with saying: “It is very well for the erudite gentleman 
from Indiana in his rhetorical flights to cry out: ‘Get your 
Keats, but I should like to hear when we can get them.” Still 
worse, however, was this from another: “Although I agree with 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


41 


the gentleman from Illinois as to the need of preparedness, I 
must object to his remark that it would revive the ‘glories of a 
Homer.’ This is too serious a subject to be discussed in the 
jargon of a baseball diamond.” 

The story is told of an eastern senator’s interruption of an 
Oklahoma member’s speech in that august body, though its 
ridiculous display of abysmal ignorance seems almost incredible. 
‘‘I dislike to interrupt the gentleman from Oklahoma,” said the 
man from New York, “but when he declares on the floor of tnis 
house that he accepts a Icertain doctrine because he found it in 
the writing of Herbert Spencer, I would inform hjm that no 
system of penmanship can make such economic heresies 
acceptable.” 

A visitor in an Alabama city went into a book store and 
noticed Willa Cather’s book of short stories, entitled ‘‘The Troll 
Garden,” on a shelf labeled “Horticulture.” At a newspaper office 
a short while afterward he remarked to a bookworm that the vol¬ 
ume was ludicrously indexed. “That’s nothing,” said the omnivorous 
reader. “A woman went into the same store the other day and 
asked for Christopher North’s ‘Noctes Amrosiane’ and was told 
that ‘We keep no musical books.’ ” There is no denying that as a 
class we are woefully ignorant in the field of literature. 

Most of us have not even a bowing acquaintance with music, 
poetry, or politics. We are content to murmur vague efctasies 
over Caruso, without being aware who wrote the opera or what 
it is all about. Let us confess that we know almost nothing of 
orchestration or even the names of the different instruments. 
We may not even be sure of what is meant by counterpoint or 
the difference between a fugo and an appeggio. Go to a recital 
and see how young and old bow approvingly, though often they aTe 
as parlous of an understanding of the numbers on the program 
as a troglodyte of trigonometry. And it is about the same with 
art. 

J. Pierpont Morgan goes to Washington frequently to consult 
a famous medical specialist. Almost invariably he visits an art 
store on Fifteenth street, opposite the treasury. Recently he came 
out of the store followed by a footman, the latter carrying a small 
painting Mr. Morgan had purchased. A practical joker who 
chanced to recognize him had an inspiration. Hurrying to a 
telephone he called up the central police station and reported: 


42 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


“J. Pierpont Morgan is at Fifteenth and F streets, and he’s got the 
Mona Lisa.” “What did you say he had?” asked the sergeant, 
who was on the desk. “The Mona Lisa.” “For the love of 
Mike,” exclaimed the sergeant. “Carry him into the drug store 
at the corner and I’ll send the ambulance.” 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


43 


CHAPTER VI 

THE GIFT OF MEMORY 

“He lives twice who can at once employ 
The present well, and e’en the past enjoy.” 

T\yT El N ANiD 1 women are dowered wtih manifold gifts, whose 
-LvJL proper employment make their starry names shine in the 
firmament of history. Moses had a genius for law, and so did 
Gladstone; Joshua for war; David for psalmody; Angelo for 
sculpture; Shakespeare for rhythms; Beethoven for harmonies; 
Webster for eloquence. But all of these had another gift which 
was the mainspring of their success or greatness, and that gift 
was a powerful memory. 

Nearly everyone has felt the need of a stronger memory. 
On various occasions the ability to recollect something as it 
really was or quote a fact once read proves to be of inestimable 
value. A good memory is to be prized. 

How fickle is the memory of man! On a recent Sunday 
evening a number of young people caught a minister’s sermon 
over the Tadio. The next morning two listeners-in were com¬ 
menting upon the distinctness of the speaker’s voice in the 
presence of a third who had not heard the sermon. Whereupon 
the latter asked who delivered the sermon, its subject and the 
principal points. Neither could recall the preacher’s name, his 
topic, nor a portion of the discussion. 

If you attend church services, on the way home ask your 
companion if he or she remembers the text. It might embarrass 
your friend. Bait suppose you were in turn asked the number of 
the first song sung? That might be embarrassing, too. 

Shortly after the World war began Irvin S, Cobb interviewed 
Lord Kitchener in London. The interview was of a casual nature. 
Cobb taking no notes. When the great war reporter’s story 
appeared in the newspapers, the effect was Contrary to what the 
British general anticipated. He immediately sent out a denial, 
saying in substance that he had been misquoted and the famous 
war correspondent twisted the facts. Somewhat of a controversy 


44 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


ensued, but Cobb finally won out even though he confessed 
no notes were taken and he relied entirely upon his memory. 
“But I have a fairly good memory,” the famous writer said. In 
this connection, it is doubtful if Irvin S. Cobb has ever forgotten 
anything he has read or seen. The reach and positiveness with 
which he can remember it is frequently commented upon. 

Dr. E. E. Yiolette of Kansas City, has a giant memory. It 
is said that he has the New Testament by heart. Evening after 
evening Dr. Violette has been seen to open his Bible at the epistle 
lesson, then step to the side and give it word for word from 
memoTy. His snatches of song and poetry, his great fund of 
illustrative material, are all at tongue’s end. * Fifteen minute 
prose quotations such as the third act of Shakespeare’s “King 
Henry VIII” are delightfully easy for the famous preacher. 

But many ministers of the gospel have trained and developed 
their memories through the pulpit. Other living examples include 
Dr. Frederick F. Shannon, successor to the late Dr. Frank W. 
Gunsalus, as pastor of Central church in Chicago, and Dr. R. A. 
Torrey, famed evangelist now of Los Angeles. Dr. Torrey’s wealth of 
stories fitting every ocasion make his auditors marvel how so 
much information could be indexed within the brain. 

Elbert Hubbard had an exceptionally strong memory. The 
famous psychologist, Hugo Munsterberg, was equally gifted. 
On page 40 in the book “On the Witness Stand,” Professor 
Munsterberg says: “During the last eighteen years I have 
delivered about three thousand university lectures. For those 
three thousand coherent addresses I had not once a single written 
or printed line or any notes whatever on the platform; and yet 
there has never been a moment whon I have had to stop for a 
name or for the connection of thought. My memory serves me 
rather generously.” 

A young Corsican became noted for his power of memory, 
and a judge proposed a test to which he instantly consented. The 
judge dictated Latin, Greek, and all kinds of names, not any one 
of them being dependable on the other. He became weary 
with dictating, and the boy tired of writing them off. He then 
told the young man he would be satisfied if he could repeat half 
of what had bene given. In a few seconds lie began, and repeated 
the names in the very same order they were set down, without 
any hesitation. Then beginning at the last, he recited them all 
backward to the first. Then he named the first, third, fifth, and 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 45 

in that order repeated all. His memory was so retentive that he 
could repeat anything entrusted to it a year after, with perfect 
accuracy. 

No, allusion is not to Napoleon. Still Napoleon had a power¬ 
ful memory, a remarkable faculty for mental reproduction of im¬ 
pressions or thoughts. For facts, events, his memory was 
prodigious. On the battlefield it was characteristic of him to 
read a message onlce or twice, then destroy it; but the essential 
facts were stored in memory’s chest for future reference. 

Whn Napoleon was in exile at Elba, he left the chateau one 
day to mingle with a crowd in the courtyard. Noticing an old 
man who wore a red ribbon in his buttonhole, Napoleon went up 
to him and said: “Are you not Jacques Dumont?” Too much 
surprised to reply at once, the veteran at length faltered, “Yes, 
my lord; yes, general; yes, yes, sire!” The exile then asked, 
“You were with me in Egypt?” Dumont brought his hand to the 
salute as he replied affirmatively: 

“You were wounded; it seems to me a long time ago?” 
Napoleon continued. “At the battle of Trebbia, sir.” The 
veteran by this time was shaking with emotion, and all the 
crowd Clustered thickly about these two. “My name! To 
remember my name fifteen years!” the old man repeated over 
and over. The incident created a great deal of excitement on 
the little island. 

'Richard Porson, the noted English Greek scholar and critic 
of the last half of the eighteenth century possessed a giant 
memory from childhood. When he was a boy at school he was 
accosted by another boy while walking forward for a lesson. 
“Porson, what have you got there?” the boy inquired. “Horace, 
came the answer. Porson’s fellow student then asked to look at 
the book, and the request was granted. Pretending to return it, 
he substituted another, with which young Porson proceeded. 
Being called on by the master, he read and construed Carm. I. X. 
very°regularly. Observing the class to laugh, the master said, 
“Porson, you seem to be reading on one side of your page while 
I am looking at the other; pray whose edition have you? 
Porson hesitated. “Let me have it,” rejoined the master, who to 
his great surprise, found it to be an English Ovid. Porson was 
ordered to go on, which he did easily and correctly. 

The power of acquisition is usually stronger in early life, is 
materially diminished in middle age, and is still less m old age. 


46 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


Irvin Cobb recently declared his “Old Judge Priest” stories were 
based on impressions formed or incidents occurring before he 
reached his thirty-fifth birthday. 

It is said that in his youth Theodore Parker could repeat 
a hymn from once hearing it read. In mature years he acquired 
one hundred and fifty lines of blank verse by a single reading, 
so as to be able to repeat it. His ease of acquisition seems to 
have been confined to poetical compositions, and is an exception 
to the rule of' memory’s fading with the years. Another exception 
was Theodore Beza, French reformer and Calvinistic theologian of 
the sixteenth century who could repeat the Scriptures in Greek 
at the age of eighty. 

Nicholas Ridley and Thomas Chanmer learned the New Testa¬ 
ment by heart, the former committing much of it to memory 
while walking through his orchard. Theodosius the younger could 
repeat any part of the Scriptures exactly. It is said of Tertullian, 
an early Latin father of the church, that he devoted his nights 
and days to the study of the Bible, and got much of it so perfectly 
that he knew its punctuation. Thomas Vincent had the New 
Testament and Psalms committed to memory. Bishop John 
Jewells of (Salisbury could repeat his sermons word for word after 
writing them. Henry Ward Beecher was scarcely less noted 
for his power of memory than his eloquence. 

The Rev. Thomas Fuller, English preacher and author of 
the seventeenth century could dictate to five writers at the same 
time on as many subjects. Napoleon could direct three officers 
at the same time. It was comparatively easy for Julius Caesar 
to add two columns of figures at the same moment. 

James C. Blaine was one of the most versatile men of his 
time. He had one extraordinary gift, which is said to belong 
only to kings; he never forgot anyone. “Years after an introduc¬ 
tion,” says Chauncey Depew in “My Memories of Eighty Years,” 
“he would recall where he had first met the stranger and 
remember his name.” Mr. Depew adds that “this compliment 
made that man Blaine’s friend for life.” 

Daniel Webster had a faculty for remembering his written 
addresses. He never used notes, yet his speeches were perfect in 
structure, language and rhetoric. “It is my memory,” he said 
when someone asked how he did it. “I can prepare a speech, 
revise and correct it in my memory, and then deliver the 
corrected speech exactly as finished.” 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


47 


Joseph Scaliger, noted French philologist and tehronologist 
who lived some thre hundred years ago, developed a wonderful 
memory through constant application. In twenty-one days he 
committed to memory the whole of Homer’s works, the Iliads, 
containing 31670 verses and the Odysseys about the same. 
Hortensius, one of the greatest orators of ancient Rome, sat a 
whole day at a public sale and then correctly enunciated, from 
memory, all the things sold, their prices, and the names of their 
purchasers. 

Cyrus the younger is reported to have known the name of 
each of the ten thousand Greeks he led against his brother, 
Artaxerxes II, and Themistocles 'could call by their names the 
twenty thousand citizens of Athens. Neibuhr, the historian, was 
not less distinguished for his memory than for his acuteness. 
In his youth he was employed by one of the offices of Denmark. 
Part of the book of accounts having been destroyed, he restored 
it by an effort of memory. The ability to do such a thing stamps 
one as extraordinary. 

Ben Johnson, the well known English dramatist, said that 
he could repeat all that he had ever written, and whole books 
that he had read. Edmund Burke, Edward Gibbon and John 
Locke were all distinguishhed for strength of memory. But for 
intellectual charm of the highest order, none were more celebrated 
that Grotius and Pascal; and Grotius and Pascal forgot nothing 
that they had ever read or thought. Leibnitz and Euler, the 
former German and the latter Swiss, both famed mathematicians, 
W ere not less celebrated for their intelligence than for their 
ability to preserve facts. and both could repeat the whole of 
“Aeneid.” 

The story is told that Voltaire was to read to Frederick the 
Great of Prussia a poem of considerable length, which he had 
just composed. After he had finished reading, the king remarked 
only, “That poem is stolen; I have heard it before.” “That is 
impossible," said the poet. Frederick the Great said he could 
prove it, and sent for a man who, to the great confusion of 
Voltaire, repeated the poem word for word. The person had 
been placed behind a screen, and from once hea r ing the poem 

was able to repeat it correctly. 

Many librarians have memories that enable them to carry in 
their list long list of titles of books, of the names of the 
authors, and even of the numbers of the books. Long practice. 


48 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


of course, has given them this accomplishment. In some cases 
it amounts to downright genius. 

One of the most extraordinary instances of that ability is to 
be found in the case of Antonio Magliabecchi, librarian of the 
grand duke Cosimo III of France. It is said that if a priest 
wished to compose a panegyric on a saint and came to Magliabecchi, 
the librarian would tell him all the references to the saint in 
literature, even to the parts of the different works wherein they 
were to be found. He could often quote as many as a hundred 
writers. 

Magliabecchi could tell not only who had treated a subject 
fairly, but also who had touched upon it incidentally in writing 
upon other subjects. It is related that when Magliabecchi visited 
other libraries his memory was so remarkable that he needed to 
see and consult a book only once in its place to fix everything 
about it permanently in his mind. 

One day the grand duke sent for the librarian to ask 
whether he could get for him a book that was decidedly rare. 
“I am sorry, your grace,” replied Magliabecchi, “but there is 
only one copy in the world. That is in the library of the grand 
seigmior at Constantinople. It is the seventh book on the second 
shelf on the right as you enter.” 

No less remarkable was Carneades, Greek orator and philoso¬ 
pher. His memory was so retentive, that he could repeat the 
entire contents of a library with as much ease as if he were 
reading out of the books themselves. As someone has said, “his 
mind was wax to receive and marble to retain.” 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


49 


CHAPTER VII 

REPARTEE 

yj EPARTEE is a gift, a bestowal conferred by favor of nature. 

It is an endowment, not an acquirement; for a man may 
know a library and yet have a slow tongue. As a gift then, the 
man in the street may have a tongue’s end the clever retort the 
comfortable gentleman employs, though the latter’s reply is more 
thoroughly polished and academic. Regardless of who possesses 
the gift, it must be confessed the power of a ready reply is very 
convenient on various occasions—the quick, sharp, witty, cutting 
or severe reply which turns the first speaker’s statement or 
argument against him or encounters it. For instance, is served 
Catherine Parr to the extent of saving her fair head when she 
was on the eve of being tried for her life. By quick repartee and 
a ready compliment to Henry VIII, who possessed vanity in its 
grossest form, she so flattered and delighted his majesty that he 
spared her life to the surprise of everybody in the kingdom. 

“A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!” roared Richard 
III as the play neared its end in an eastern theatre last November. 
A wag in the gallery shouted. “Wiouldn’t a donkey do for you?” 
And the quick reply came back, “Yes, come around to the stage 
door!” This recalls an amusing incident that occurred during 
President Grant’s administration. A man named Bedell had writ¬ 
ten a solemn, highly audable history of Grant’s career. One 
night he went, with the President, to Billy Birch’s minstrel 
show, in one of the Washington theaters. As the end man, 
Billy recited a little joke on President Grant himself, who did 
not hesitate to laugh at it. But Bedell hissed. Billy Birch 
tiptoed to the footlights, cocked his head on one side and looked 
directly at the White House party. Then he turned to the 
audience and remarked, “Ah! I see we have a hiss-torian among 
us this evening!” The following is an even better example of the 
common joker: “What might your name be?” “It might be 
Smith, but it isn’t?” 

In one of his books—“In the Spotlight”—the late Elbert 
Hubbkrd tells of having visited a vaudeville show in Chicago on 


50 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


amateur night. The first number on the program was a pretty 
girl who tried to sing “Where Is My Wandering Boy Tonight?’' 
She announced the name of the song and at once a voice from 
the gallery came back, “Here I am, mammy!” Next came a 
Dutchman who began a monologue with, “Boys, I vendt a-fishing 
last veek and vot do you tink I got?” “The hook!” came back 
the stentorian answer from the king of the gallery. Though 
coarse, these retorts are undeniably expressions of quick thought 
and perception. 

A few years ago Helen Keller, the famous blind author- 
lecturer, spoke in Garig hall at Baton Rouge, La. Upon closing 
her address Miss Keller announced she would answer any questions 
of interest relating to her life, “Can you tell colors by touch?” 
someone inquired. “Yes, I can feel blue,” she replied as laughter 
swept the auditorium. 

Secretary Daniels had the gift of the happy retort, as he 
showed in London several years ago when someone was twitting 
him about his views of prohibition and the absence of a rum 
ration in the American navy. “Do you think your navy fights 
better when it lacks spirits?” Mr. Daniels was asked. “Certainly,” 
was the reply, “A navy naturally fights better on water.” 

When Oscar Wilde was lecturing in this country he bepame 
indignant one night and declared, “All of you here are Philistines 
mere Philistines.” “Yes,” retorted one old fellow, “we are all 
Philistines, and that is why we are being insulted with the 
jawbone of an ass!” It was a clever one on the author of “The 
Ballad of Reading Gaol.” 

Tom Reed, speaker of the House for many years, was 
never at a loss for a rejoinder. When a member once in 
attempting to justify his position exclaimed, “I would rather be 
right than be president,” Reed instantly replied, “You’ll never 
be either,” borrowed though it was. 

Richard Sheridan, Irish dramatist and politician, was arrested 
ane night for maudlin drunkenness. When asked his name he 
answered thickly “Wilberfore”—that being the name of England’s 
pioneer prohibitionist. William Wilberfore, it might be related, 
had a witty sister who was as active in political circles as he. 
She hustled for William, and succeeded in getting him elected 
to parliament. On one ocasion when she had concluded her 
stump speech some enthusiasts in the crowd shouted, “Miss 
Wilberforce forever.” The lady hurriedly stepped forward. 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 51 

“Gentlemen, I thank you, but I do not wish to be Miss Wilberforce 
forever!” 

Who has not heard of Mary Worthington Montague, high¬ 
born dame of brilliant wit, known as the introducer into Europe 
of the vaccination practice? Her high breeding once manifested 
itself in a rather famous repartee. Some daring person having 
■ventured to remark to the Lady Mary that her hands were dirty, 
that courageous patrician retorted daintily, “You ought to see 
my feet!” 

The name of Frederick the Great recalls days of old-fashioned 
kingship, when things occurred at which history finds a moment’s 
amusement. It is narrated that on one oc 2 asion when Frederick 
was walking along the streets of Potsdam, he fell in with a 
company of schoolbys; he thought they were truant. “Boys, 
what are you doing here?” he asked, and before a reply could 
be made exclaimed, “Get yourselves to school this instant!” 

Then one of the lads sent back at his majesty the answer: “Oh, 
you are the king, you are, and don’t know that this is a holiday!” 

Frederick accepted the situation, joined heartily in the laugh at 
his own expense and gave to the boys some coins from his own 
pockets. 

Senator “Pat” Harrison of Mississippi was addressing the 
Senate when he was interrupted by the late Senator “Tom” 

Watson of Georgia. “Is the junior Senator from Mississippi a 
lawyer?” inquired Senator Watson. “I used to be, before I began 
associating with you fellows,” was Harrison’s response. 

William Pitt, the greatest Englishman of his generation, 
v/as severely criticized for appointing General James Wolfe to lead 
the Quebec expedition. “Pitt’s new general is mad,” said ex- 
Premier Newcastle. “Mad, is he?” returned Pitt; “then I hope 
he will bite some other of my generals.” This frrnigs to mind 
President Lincoln’s remark about General Grant. Being informed 
that Grant sometimes drank, he expressed a desire to know the 
brand of whiskey Grant used, as he wished to give it to some of 
the other generals. 

Henry Clay was a man of ready wit, and he often astonished * 

his friends by his answers. One day while at a Philadelphia 

hotel he was called on by John W. Forney, editor of The Press, 

in company with Edwin Forrest, the actor. It was just after the 

general debates in the Senate on the Omnibus bill, and these 

debates soon became the topic of conversation, especially the 

* 


52 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


opposition Clay had encountered from Soule, of Louisiana. 
Whereupon Clay exclaimed, “Soule is no orator! He is nothing 
but an actor, a mere actor!” No sooner had he said this than 

he realized the presence of Forrest, the actor, and turning to 

him, added, “I mean, my dear sir, a French actor, a mere 

French actor.” Clay was a hard drinker for many years, pro¬ 
fane and overbearing at times, and he had one other fault— 
gambling. Hie was known as a “gentleman gambler.” Someone 
asked Mrs. Clay if her husband’s gambling did not worry and 
trouble her. “Oh, no,” she said, ”he most always wins.” 

A Virginia lawyer once objected to an expression of the 
Act of Assembly of Pennsylvania, that the State House yard 
should be “surrounded by a brick wall and remain an open 
enclosure forever.” “But,” said Judge Breckenridge, who was 
present, “I put him down by that Act of the Legislature of 

Virginia which is entitled, ‘A supplement to an Act to amend 
an Act making it penal to alter the mark of an unmarked hog.’ ” 

A jovial Jack Tar saw an announcement in an ironmonger’s 
show window as follows: “Iron Sinks.” For sheer sport he 
went in and told the man he knew than iron sank. “Yes,” said 
the man, “and time flies, but grass slopes, and music stands; 
Niagara Falls, moonlight walks, sheep run, and holiday trips; 
scandal spreads, standard weights, India rubber tires, the organ 
stops and the whole world goes round; trade Teturns.” The 
bluejacket bolted. Then he returned, put his head in at the 
door, and remarked: “Yes, I know; and marble busts, coal 
chutes, Robert Burns and kindling wood!” 

It is related of Sir Walter Scott that, when in Ireland, he 
had occasion to give sixpence to a poor man for opening a gate 
or some such passing service. Finding after much search among 
his silver that he had nothing less than a shilling, he handed it 
to the man with the observation, “I onljr intended to give you 
half this sum, and therefore remember you owe me sixpence.” 
Murphy’s instant reply was, “Oh, bless your honor! May you 
live till I pay you!” 

Everyone has sympathy for the school teacher who is cut 
off from dignified leisure of a long summer holiday, when during 
vacation he finds himself compelled to earn a few extra dollars by 
amateur bricklaying in order to appease the rapacity of land¬ 
lords and provisioners. Recently a noted educator deplored the 
fact that the average teacher’s salary compared unfavorably with 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 53 

that of other professions where like intelligence is required. The 
speaker had made his point when an enthusiastic listener ex¬ 
claimed, “Long live the professor!” “What on!” instantly asked 
the professor. 

But of all the professions perhaps none has more wits 
than the clergy. Many who wear the white necktie are the 
wittiest of men, witty merely because of sheer native brilliance 
which surpasses all ordinary standards in swift perception and 
happy expression. When Sidney Smith was asked by Landseer 
the animal painter to sit for his picture, the jocular divine 
answered in the language of Hazael to Elisha, “Is they servant a 
dog that he should do this great thing?” Gypsy Smith was con¬ 
ducting meetings in New York City, and he asked some young 
fellows outside the church to attend the service. A gay chap 
remarked, “Oh, no, they’re all women in there.” The evangelist 
was not without a characteristic reply. “Come with me to jail,” 
said Gypsy Smith; “they're all men there.’ 

A man stepped up to Henry Ward Beecher one day and said: 
“Sir, I am an evolutionist, and I want to discuss the question 
with you. I am also an annihilist; I believe that when I die 
that will be the end of me.” “Thank goodness for that,” said 
Beecher as he walked off and left the man dazed. 

During a debate between an atheist and Christian minister, 
the former finally announced from the platform that he could 
actually prove from Scripture the non-existence of a Supreme 
Being. Sure enough, he snatched the Bible from the preacher s 
hand and turned to the first verse of the Fourteenth Psalm and 
read, “There is no God.” “Hold on!” exclaimed the preacher, 
“read the first part of that verse, ‘The fool hath said in his 

heart, ‘There is no God.’ ” 

“Away and mock the time with fairest show; 

False face must hide what the false heaTt doth know.” 

Many, many years ago an incident occurred in a Paducah 
newspaper office which it is in a way pertinent to relate here. 
The editor has been aroused by a change made in his editorial, 
and in his rage wrote a note to the printer in the composing 
room who had set the article. The note read: “The editor thinks 
the printer is suffering from mental lethargy.” Tne old composi¬ 
tor adjusted his glasses and scanned the editor’s message. Then 
he took his pencil, pcnctuated it, and returned it, reading. The 
editor; 1 thinks the printer, is suffering from mental lethargy!” It 


54 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


was a clever reply, characteristic of that department of newspa¬ 
pers in which were produced men like Benjamin Franklin, Elbert 
Hubbard, Joseph Pulitzer, Bret Harte, Mark Twain, Horace 
Greeley, Warren G. Harding and a score of others of the world’s 
colossi—printers all. 

It was at a Methodist conference where Bishop Fowler was 
presiding. Dr. J. M. Buckley, the author, tried to get the floor 
and was ruled down by the bishop. Dr. Buckley said in a rather 
loud aside, “Lord, deliver us from the snare of the Fowler.” 
The bishop overheard, and leaning forward said, “What is that 
you said? Now please finish that quotation, ‘and from the 
noisome pestilence!’ ” turning the laugh on the. doctor. 

Dr. Hume Nesbit, Scottish author and artist, and president of 
Dickinson college at Carlisle, one morning met a brother professor 
and complained of a ringing in his head. “Do you know what 
that is a sign of? No? It is a sign your head is hollow.” 
“What,” said Dr. Nisbet, “doesn’t your head ever ring? No? 
Then it is a sign it is cracked.” 

In “The Americanization of Edward Bok” the author tells of a 
letter Henry Ward Beecher received from a man who expressed 
disappointment in the famous preacher and declared Beecher 
“made an ass of himself” at the Sunday morning service; ihe 
critic called the sermon a “political harangue, with no reason of 
cohesion in it.” The well known preacher replied he was sorry 
he advertised himself in that manner. “I have just one consola¬ 
tion,” he added, “and that is that you did not make an ass of 
yourself. The Lord did that.” 

Some time ago a member of the Senate sent ‘Senator Hiram 
Johnson a note, saying he was glad when the Californian had 
finished an address, and declaring Johnson “was an ass.” Turning 
the note over, he wrote on the back and returned it reading, 
“Thank you for the information. Yours fraternally.” 

The Rev. Dr. W. M. Gloss had a reputation for his dry wit, 
which made him an interesting .conversationalist. Before he had 
been dubbed a D. D. a friend asked him why some college had 
not made him a Doctor of Divinity. He replied: “Because my 
divinity does not need doctoring.” 

The beloved Bishop John H. Vincent, who by establishing 
summer schools originated the Chautauqua idea, was keen in 
retort and was known for his scintillating wit. On one occasion 
Bishop Vincent was introducing Dr. Henson, a man as clever as 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


55 


he. “Tonight we have a lecture on Fools by one (and then he 
paused) of the wisest men in our land.” Dr. Henson arose 
saying, “I am not so great a fool as Dr. Vincent (and then 
paused) takes me to be!” The audience roared, and under the 
speaker’s magic was held in pleasant mood throughout the 
lecture. 

Isaac Barrow, English theologian and scholar, professor of 
mathematics at Cambridge just before Newton, was keen as a 
razor; his repartees were quick, spontaneous, overwhelming. Earl 
Rochester was a dissolute figure at the court of Charles II when 
this polite skirmish occurred: “I am yours to the knee buckles,” 
said Rochester. The English divine replied, “I am yours to the 
shoe tie.” “I am yours to the ground,” said the Earl. “Yours, 
my lord, to the center of the earth,” continued Barrow. “Yours, 
doctor, to the lowest pit of hell,” said Rochester. “There, my 
lord, I must leave you,” rejoined the witty theologian. 

About 1843 the Millerites believed the world was coming 
to an end and even set the day and had their ascension robes 
ready. The story is told that one of these cranks was expounding 
his doctrine in an omnibus before Holmes and Emerson. “What 
matter to me,” said Holmes, “I live in Boston.” “W T ell,” Emerson 
came back in a dry tone, “let the old world go; we can get 
along without it.” They evidently believed with Cato in Addison’s 
tragedy— 

“Unhurt amid the war of elements, 

The wreck of matter, and the crush of worlds.” 


56 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


CHAPTER VIII 


FUN IN NEWSPAPER ERRORS 


“Forgive, son; 

Men are men, they needs must err.” 


ROTESQUE and laugh provoking—what is funnier than a 



VJ* typographical error in a newspaper? Some of the finest 
jokes extant come through the fact that the printer’s finger 
slips. Usually, these mistakes or “breaks” are funny a long, long 
time afterward—never at the time. For instance, several years 
ago a newspaper was threatened with suit because an article was 
printed about a prima donna being engaged as a screen star to 
act in the movies. A typographical error made the heading 
read, “Scream Star Was Once Singer.” To be sure, there was 
considerable excitement in the editor’s sanctum before the vocalist 
could be pacified. Yet, no one detests the sight of an error 
more than the editor himself. If someone could invent or suggest 
a way to forever do away with mistakes—could make infallible 
the columns of a newspaper—the editor would probably feel con¬ 
strained to give that individual a loving cup and every community 
would feel like naming streets in his honor. 

There is no getting away from it, newspaper slips are some¬ 
times terrible. Somehow, everybody sees the incongruous, the 
ridiculous, the preposterous. When a preacher makes a mistake 
nobody knows the difference, or at least has not the necessary 
information or facts at hand to call him to book. If a doctor 
makes a mistake he buries it. When an electrician errs in 
judgment he blames it on “induction” because no one knows 
what it is. Should a judge make a mistake it becomes the law 
of the land. If a plumber fails in some pipe-jointing he charges 
twice for it. But if the newspaper printer errs in print, the 
offended will not forgive and the public cannot forget. 

iSupppose your name is Haskle. Would you not feel a bit 
peeved should you find in a local paper that an “R” had inad¬ 
vertently placed itself where an “H” ought to be? You would 
certainly not be able to extract as much amusement from such 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 57 

an incident as your neighbors; but your position would be no 
more embarrassing than that of an American who had been for 
a tour around the world and found himself much annoyed with 
a report of his return. The report ended: “His numerous friends 
are surprised that he is unhanged!” He sped to the newspaper 
office and in his fury could have grabbed the ulotrichous editor 
by his wolly hair, but learned that the offender was the compos¬ 
itor, who, in setting up the report had omitted the letter “c,” 
thus substituting the word “unhanged” for “unchanged,” which 
the reporter had written. Only recently a somewhat elaborated 
personal telling of a young lady’s visit and departure said “she 
made many fiends while here,” the fact that an “r” failed in 
the personal noun giving the sentence an entirely different 
meaning than that intended. 

A Buffalo paper, in describing the scene when Roosevelt 
took the oath of office as President, said it was a spectacle never 
to be forgotten when Roosevelt, before the chief justice of the 
Supreme Court and a few witnesses, took his simple bath— 
meaning oath, of course. But perhaps the most unfortunate 

error protruded itself from the columns of a Bridgeport, Conn., 
newspaper last August, in the description of a wedding. It read. 
“The bride carried an arm bouquet of punk roses.” “Pink” was 
the word intended, but it seems the gods are powerless in the 
hands of the printer. Else, how can one account for a display 
line in an advertisement reading, “We shot the entire family, 
when “shoe” is more profitable and healthful? 

Less tragic, but nearly as embarrassing, was the experience 
of a reporter who had been assigned to “cover” the outdoor end 
of a fashionable chuifch wedding. He described the throng of 
uninvited guests that had clustered about the awning in hope 
of gaining a glimpse of the bridal pair as they emerged from 
the church to enter a waiting automobile, and he recorded the 
result in the following words: “The comely bride was quickly 
swept from sight by the eager groom.” But the pitiless type set 
it forth thus: “The homely bride was quickly swept from sight 
by the eager broom.” One’s sympathy for the reporter is 
lessened, however, by the fact that he applied to a newly married 
man a term should be confined to a house maid. 

Only those who have gone through an operation which is 
fresh in the memory can appreciate the gravity—and humor—of 
a “break” in an Oklahoma daily. “Mr. Blank, who was operated 


58 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


on for appendicitis,” read an item in the western paper, “is rap¬ 
idly recovering. His many friends hope to see him out again 
soon.” The same paper shortly afterward intended to state that 
the windows on a certain street in the town needed washing, and 
the “n” was omitted in “windows.” 

But the widows did not have nearly as much of a grievance 
against the printers as the clergyman in the eastern part of 
Kentucky who preached on the subject, “The Cup in Joseph’s 
Sack.” The town weekly’s linotype operator made the reverend 
gentleman talk about “The Cup in Joseph’s Sock.” If the 
widows and this clergyman have cause for protest, so has the 
Louisville pastor who took fo'r his text “The Broken Net.” 
Imagine his chagrin upon seeing the announcement in a daily 
that he would preach about “The Broken Neck!” Indeed, it 
bekame necessary on one occasion for a minister to make explana¬ 
tion of an error appearing on tickets for an entertainment with 
which he was charged with having printed. “I wish it to be 
thoroughly understood,” said the preacher to his congregation 
on Sunday, “that the pulpit is not responsible for the printer’? 
error which occurs on the tickets for the Sunday school children’^ 
entertainment. The affair is for the benefit of the arch fund— 
not the arch fiend!” 

More than one citizen of Paducah remembers the write-up 
of a social event which occurred at Wallace park several years 
ago. It was proven in this case that the error was the fault of 
an excited reporter. In detail he told of the evening’s pleasure, 
but marred the whole society lead when he wrote that “a 
suspicious gathering was present.” Everyone knew “auspicious” 
was the word intended, and laughed at the “break.” 

The insertion, omission or substitution of a single letter in a 
printed word, or transposition of letters and even whole lines of 
type as shown above is, then, the cause of much merriment and 
laughter—years afterward. “Our delicious canned meats from 
the best houses,” was the way the advertiser wrote the line. 
“From the best horses” was the way it appeared in the paper, 
and complainant was justified in becoming infuriated. “Thousands 
of our patrons are wearing trousers of our make,” and the tailors 
who so advertised had reason to be angry when the printer made 
the fourth word of their announcement read “matrons.” 

An English railway company advertised requesting owners 
of unclaimed goods to remove same. “Come forward and pay the 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


59 


awful charges on your merchandise,” were the final words of the 
advertisement. One “1” was missing in ‘‘lawful,” and thus the 
announcement became a typographical curiosity. A writer, in 
commending the ability of a lady principal of a girls’ school, 
used this expression: ‘‘The reputation for teaching which she 
bears.” But that horrid linotype operator omitted the word 
“which” and the result created more than a giggle. A theatrical 
man not long since contemplated writing an article on “Green¬ 
wood Cemetery’s Dramatic Shrines.” A Brooklyn paper announced 
his intention, and left the “r” out of “shrines.” Few people 
know that Ada iRehan’s real name was Crehan. Early in her 
career her name appeared on a program without the “C”—a 
typographical error—and she was known ever after as Rehan. 

The telephone was partly responsible for a curious error on 
a ribbon for a wreath, which a mourner intended to place on 
the grave of a friend. “Please print ‘Rest in Peace’ on both sides” 


was the order to the printer over the phone, and the ribbon when 
finished bore the inscription: “Rest in Peace on Both Sides.” 
This ludicrous error was caused through the printer’s ignorance, 
of course, though the sentence is truly ambiguous. “On with 
the dance; let joy be uncoffined,” was the way one linotype 
operator showed that he was not acquainted with the oft-quoted 


line from Byron's “Childe Harold.” 

The chairman of the arrangement committee of the concert 
sent the copy for the program to the printer. It was put into 
type, corrected and o. k.’d, and ready for the press. Then the 
mayor of the town died. When the chairman heard of the death 
he decided that the concert should open with Chopin’s “Funeral 
March” as a mark of respect. He accordingly called the printer on 
the telephone and asked if it were possible to add an ittm at the 
beginning of the program. The printer asked: “What’s the 

item 9 ” The chairman replied: “ ’Funeral Marfch’ by Chopin. 
One can imagine the agonizing look on the committeeman’s face 
as he beheld the finished product of the printer on the night of 
the concert, for the opening item on the program read: “A few 

remarks by Chopin!” . 

An item appearing in a San Ftancisco newspaper about eight 

years ago sounds like a joke, but those who tell about it vouch 
tor its authenticity. The error might have been the printers 
though it seems the reporter was guilty in this case. “Where do 
you intend to reside after your marriage to Mr. Hardup. Miss 


60 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


Millionbucks was asked by the reporter, just previous to the 
wedding. “At the Old Manse/’ she replied. And the paper the 
next day printed this paragraph: “Mr. Hardup and bride, the 
former Miss Millionbucks, daughter of A. Millionbucks, will reside 
at the old man’s after they return from their honeymoon.” 

In a two-column article commending the department of agri¬ 
culture head for a position he took with reference to some matter 
in question, the statement appeared in a St. Louis paper that he 
was a busy man “outlying the department’s policy.” The word 
“outlining” was meant, and through the mistake an entirely dif¬ 
ferent meaning was conveyed. Recently a Paducah paper printed 
vrhat purported to be a balanced ration of summer reading, and 
the list on psychology included “Outwitting Our Negroes” 
(Jackson).” The next day an apology appeared for “Outwitting Our 
Nerves (Jackson)” was intended. 

Some years ago a certain dramatic critic on the New York 
American is said to have turned out such trying manuscript that 
few compositors were able to decipher it. On one occasion he 
wrote, “Julia Marlowe was a picture of radiant girlhood.” That 
was all right, but the printer could not make out the last two 
words. He thought they might possibly be a foreign phrase, and 
he put them in italics, “savrant gallirod.” So it sometimes hap¬ 
pens that unintelligible copy is the reason for a mistake. 

Another instance of poorly written copy causing a blunder, 
occurred on the New York Recorder. A reporter wrote, “St. 
Paul’s epistle to the Corinthians,” but the printer made it 
“Oorkonians!” He should have made a better guess, though he 
did as well as the backwoods school teacher who thought the 
Straits of Gibraltar an insurance company, or the student who 
located New York City “on the mouth of the Amazon river.” But 
while the “Corkonian” blunder ruffled those who read it, one 
can imagine how a prominent minister felt when he saw mention 
of a whist party in the auditorium of his church. The paper 
casually mentioned there would be a “whiskey party!” 

This “break” recalls one appearing in an eastern paper two 
years ago, and since it refers to a beverage supposedly forbidden 
within the three-mile limit, it is possible the same person put it 
in print. The copy read, “Too near the Bowery.” It came out 
in the paper like this: “Too near the brewery.” 

In half-frgotten days an old-time printer came across the 
classic quotation, “ ’Tis true ’tis pity; and pity ’tis ’tis true.” 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


61 


But the old fellow evidently had never seen it before, else he 
would not have misinterpreted it so freely. Here is the way it 
read when the paper came out: “ ’Tis two ’tis 22; yes 22 ’tis 
two.” 


In setting forth the features of a Fourth of July celebration 
the word “illuminating” was used. But after the paper was on 
the streets it read like a description of a St. Patrick’s day parade 
by a man who was born blind. The sentence set forth: “There 
will be a rare display of fireworks at night, eliminating the sky.” 
Good-by, up yonder! But that was no worse than the jeweler 
who was advertising diamond mountings and found that the 
printer 'changed the word to “mountains.” Nor did he have 
more reason for complaint than the editor who wrote “unassail¬ 
able” and found “unassistable” in its stead. 

Evidently desiring to be truthful with himself and everybody 
else, a Mayfield advertiser not long ago imparted the startling 
information that his establishment carried “the best fakes of 
phonograph records.” But it was not meant that way, for an 
“f” inadvertently placed itself where an “m” properly belonged. 
And it took a whole lot of reasoning to convince the advertiser 
that it was “a mistake, sir; nothing but a mistake.” 

Yet that was no worse than the Paducah paper which 
eighteen months ago attempted to pay a highly complimentary 
remark to a former member of the editorial staff wiio had re¬ 
turned for a visit after a ten-years’ absence. The visitor was 
known for his writing ability and power of conversation, being 
abreast of all subjects through intensive reading. The tribute 
closed by saying “he is an expert conversationalist and has a lie 
for all occasions.” Of course the “n” in the word “line” was omitted 
through a mechanical fault, and it created more than a giggle. 

.Many years ago the Toronto World pointed side by side, at 
the bottom of the front page, two items; one was the notice of a 
scheduled Picnic, the other recorded the passing of a prominent 
citizen. A line at the bottom of one item dropped, and m the 
hurry of newspaper makeup was slapped back at the foot of the 
other The death report appeared the next morning with the 
following concluding paragraph: “The funeral will take place 
tomorrow at 2:30 p, m. A very enjoyable time is promised. 

A newspaper in southern Wisconsin mixed up a society item 
with a farm note, and a sorry jumble it was. Here is how 
the leading society item read that day: “The Red ross conce 


62 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


given last night by sixteen of our beautiful young ladies was 
highly apprecaited. They sang in a charming manner, winning 
the plaudits of the audience, who pronounced them the finest 
group of short horns in the county. A few of them were rich 
brown in color, but the majority were spotted red 
and white. Several of the heifers are fine bodied, tight-limbed 
animals and promise to prove good property.” 

Down in Marshall, Texas, there lived a man who manufac¬ 
tured a special product used as an aid in sweeping floors; its in¬ 
gredients were not many, as usual, but its virtues were multi¬ 
plied. It was called “Sanitary Floor Sweep.” The Messenger of 
that city carried a two-line reader advertising the remedy, and 
one day just as the type pages were being closed the editor ran 
back with an announcement of a new arrival in the community. 
Incidentally the dust extinguisher reader appeared directly under 
the birth notice. This is what afforded the evening’s joke: 
“Blorn, to Mr. and Mrs. John Smith, today, a boy, John, Jr.” 
Then came the advertisement: “Kill those germs with Sanitary 
Floor Sweep.” 

A printer set up a poster to advertise an address by a mili¬ 
tant suffragette. Her subject was, “Woman, Without Her, Man 
Would Be a Savage.” When the speaker called for the posters 
the proofreader had to leave town suddenly for the punctuation 
had been changed and the flaming sheets read: “Woman, 

Without Her Man, Would Be a Savage.” 

In the old days before typesetting machines made their 
advent and all type was set by hand, an editor, who had the 
scarcely readable handwriting that added to Horace Greeley’s 
fame, used the words “harassed editor” in an item. Imagine his 
surprise to find that the printer made it “harnessed editor.” But 
the old printer probably was right, at that. 

When the Kentucky Bar Association planned to meet in 
Paducah, one paper carried a two-line heading announcing the 
coming. The last word in the heading had been changed from 
“July” to “Jail,” and the heading read: “State Bar Here Three 
Days in Jail.” 

Over at Carthage, Mo., the Carthage Press carried a little 
mixup that appeared all the more humorous through the circum¬ 
stances of the child being the first born. The birth notice and 
the ending of a court case were mysteriously mixed, so that the 
birth notice ended: “The name selected for the child was passed 


youth and other things 


63 


up to the jury without argument/’ A reporter on the New York 
Herald wrote the sentence: “The heavy ordnance rumbled down 
the street, flags flying, amid the martial music.” The third word 
was changed to “ordinance”—by someone who evidently “kept 
the home fires burning” during the World War. 

Several years ago an Oklahoma weekly had for its editor one 
who prided himself for the venom of his pen. Shortly before 
late Senator William J. Stone ceased electrifying the political 
atmosphere and passed to to where the pearly gates need not the 
close watching that political fences do, the editor attacked him 
for some transgression. After a recitation of every unsatisfactory 
move the senator had ever made and a general indictment of his 
whole public career, the half-column article closed by saying the 
people of Missouri were at last beginning to realize the utter 
despicability of his methods, and the day could not be distant 
when “his political skin would drape the ba'ok fence.” Without 
so much as a “news dash” separating the calorific editorial from 
a two-line advertisement, the latter read as follows: “A. J. 
Ahlwardt pays the highest price for hides and furs.” 

An example of where the changing of two words made a 
complete change of persons appeared in the New Yory Herald. 
A lead editorial had meant to say in part, “have not yet revealed 
anything of a criminal nature compared in dignity and scientific 
skill with the operations of the old-fashioned black bugler.” For 
“black bugler” read “bank burglar.” 

Some months ago the New York Times had a cable story 
about Gainsborough’s “Blue Boy,” and in the story mentioned 
Reynolds’ “Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Nurse.” It had been 
written “Muse,” but it looked something like “Nurse,” and that 
was all the linotype operator needed. The Evening Globe, of the 
same day, approppriated the story and also made it “Tragic 
Nurse.” The Tribune, in commenting on it the day after, said 
that if she could only have played in Ibsen it might have been 
die Tragic Norse! An editor used the phrase, “pigs in a poke.” 
One can easily visualize his consernation when he read “figs is a 
joke.” He did not consider it a joke, although he understood. 

The Morning Telegraph, New York’s sporting and theatrical 
daily, had a sentence reading “First appearance of Rose Coghlan 
in Goatville.” It should have been “in vaudeville.” The same 
paper said “BalWhoo Bey’s (a crack race horse) mind is affected.” 
It should have been “wind,” showing the vast change of meaning 


64 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


acomplished by the misuse of a single letter. In a middle-western 
city Maggie Oline was billed as “The Irish Thrush,” but the paper 
said “Irish Trash.” And the same paper shortly afterward printed 
“Turning of the Screw” for Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew.” 

A Kentucky paper carried an advertisement relating to 
traveling. The original copy read, “For winter tours, go to—,” 
but the printer’s thoughts were on something else, for he made 
it “winter trousers.” Another Blue-Grass paper ran an adver¬ 
tisement reading, “Farms, residences, village properties for sale; 
many bargains.” It appeared all Tight to that point, when it 
read “many burglaries.” 

At a wedding in the old days at the cathedral in New York, 
the reporter said the avenue was crowded with “cabs and car¬ 
riages.” But that everlasting printer made it “cats and canaries” 

•—quite a tempting combination, don’t you think? Down in 
Mississippi a reporter wrote “It burst upon them like a ray of 
sunshine,” and he does not yet understand how it came to be 
changed to “like a rag of muslin.” But it is easy to reason out 
when one remembers that Beethoven’s Symphony was twisted 
into Beethoven’s Syrup Honey. Some time ago May Irwin's “I 
Want You, Ma Honey” was changed to “I Want You, Mahony,” 
and the name “Jabez Carson” appeared several times in an article 
when “Julius Caesar” was intended. 

“Vanderbilt Gallery Thrown Open to the Public” was the 
way a headline was written, and this was changed to read 
“Vaudeville Gallery.” And another New York paper had a “flood 
of immigrants at Ellis Island” changed to a “flood of imagina¬ 
tion.” That was not much of a change, but of imagination it was 
a plenty. 

Our transplanted American artist (Whistler) was classified 
as “Jas. Abbott McNeill, whistler, painter and sculptor,” and the 
Milton Aborn Opera Company appeared as “The Milton, a barn 
opera company”—both errors in a New York daily. But it was 
no worse than - a reference to Anatole France, the distinguished 
French author, appearing in the Paducah News-Democrat. It 
spoke of “Anatole, France’s great writer.” In New York an old- 
time dock-rat was arrested by an Atlantic Dock policeman, but 
the linotype operator evidently thought an “Athletic Dutch police¬ 
man” would look better, for that is what he made it. When a 
sportsman shipped a string of race horses to Saratoga, the news¬ 
paper story was written about “all-aged race horses” that were 


65 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 

en route. The linotype operator sailed them “alleged race 
horses.” Maybe he spoke from sad experience. 

It sometimes happens that the linotype operator or printer 
has something else in mind when seemingly busy at his fascinating 
work. Rampant thought-wandering would account for many 
mistakes. When Peter Maher, pugilist, came to America, in set¬ 
ting the headline for a story on Easter music, the linotype 
operator made it “Rossini’s “Stab at Maher” for Rossini’s “Stabat 
Mater.” 

A society reporter on a New York paper wrote a fearful 
hand. In a story on heraldry, and New Yorkers who were entitled 
to coats-of-arms, etc., she wrote that a certain New York matron, 
“through a second marriage, had added to her arms,” and then 
followed the usual lion rampant, unicorn, birds couchant ad lib. 
It would have been all right if the linotype operator could have 
deciphered her bad manuscript, but the best he could make of 
the word “arms” was “alms.” The proud lady asked a correction, 
and the next day the paper said the word should have been 
“aims.” This aroused her all the more and led to the discharge 
of the man responsible for the error. In apologizing and trying 
to atone for the double “break,” the paper made still another 
when it said “the guilty person had been replaced.” Replaced! 

“The best may slip, and the most cautious fall; 

He’s more than mortal that ne’er err’d at all.” 

The story is told of the mixing up of two news items in a 
Washington paper many years ago. The announcement that a 
minister was to be presented with a token of appreciation by his 
congregation was printed. A write-up of a newly patented pig¬ 
killing machine which had been demonstrated appeared in the 
same issue. This was the rather amusing result of the two stories 
being “pied up,” as the printers say: “Several of the Rev. D. 
K. Mudge’s friends called upon him yesterday and after a conver¬ 
sation the unsuspecting pig was seized by the legs and slid along 
the beam until he reached the hot-water tank.” It took consid¬ 
erable explaining to set the editor right that day, though he was 
innocent of the bungle. 

John Locke, the Irish poet, was known as “The Southern 
Gael.” When he died an obituary appeared in one of the Irish- 
American journals and referred to him as “The Southern Gale.” 
This was a breezy transposition, to be sure, and changed the 


66 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


meaning considerably. The editor did not get “in bad” because 
the two letters weTe transposed, though a prominent politician 
did “howl” when he saw intelligence of his resignation from 
public office printed under the heading of “Public Improvements.” 

But the most startlingly ridiculous transposition on record is 
probably that appearing on the first page of a Chicago daliy, for 
“breaks” are certain to be obtentatiously displayed in the most 
conspicuous places. First there was an article with this caption, 
the dash separating the first line of a three-line heading: “The 
Condor of the Andes—Albert Seaton Berry, of Kentucky, Bears 
That Distinction.” In another column, on the same page of the 
paper in question, was the announcement: “Tallest Man in 
Congress—Soars Far Above the Eagle and Reafches a Height of 
Six Miles.” 

Cardinal Gibbons, in an interview a few years ago, told a 
story of P. S. Gilmore and his band. “Gilmore,” said the 
cardinal, “was famous for his playing of Mozart’s ‘Twelfth 
Mass.’ On one occasion he played it in a North Carolina town and 
the next day the local paper announced that he rendered with 
great effect “Mozart’s ‘Twelfth Massachusetts.’ ” The story re¬ 
minds one of the typesetter who eternally “improved” on his 
copy as written by the reporter. A young couple w~ere married 
at nuptial mass in a Georgia fcity, but he knew better—he made 
it “Nuptial, M'ass.” 

Besides the typographical errors with which all newspapers 
are familiar, glaring inconsistencies often make apologies neces¬ 
sary. For example, a New York daily once announced that a 
famous singer had contracted a cold and would be unable to 
appear at a scheduled concert. The item appeared on the same 
page with a cold-cure advertisement. It is certain the advertising 
manager had to do a lot of explaining, for the cold-cure adver¬ 
tisement contained a signed testimonial from that selfsame 
singer! 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


67 


CHAPTER IX 

PHRASES THAT CONFUSE 

rr^HERE is a difference between what newspapers call a common 

typographical error or “break,” and the ridiculously am¬ 
biguous sentences that so often arrest attention. Improper usage 
of words is frequently responsible for expressions that have a 
double meaning. Punctuation—or rather a laick of punctuation— 
is another reason for phrases that read both ways. But poorly 
constructed sentences take the lead. 

Look at the program of an amusement park in Chicago which 
last summer featured Miss Parker, terpsichorehn artist. She, the 
printed program says, “since February has been on the road 
dancing from Philadelphia to Omaha.” Reconstruction of that 
sentence might have cleared the meaning, for it is ambiguous 
in the extreme. 

Some time ago the Lyric theater at Knoxville, Ill., had the 
following on its programs: “All films are censured. Affords a 
means of relaxation for St. Alban’s students.” The word 
“censored” would have been proper and was probably intended; 
if not, one might infer that knocking is a great relaxation. 

On the dining room card of a certain hotel in an Arkansas 
town there is this unusual request: “Please report any inatten¬ 
tion of the waitress to the manager.” What does the come-and-go 
diner care for the filial feelings of the busy waitress toward the 
self-centered boss? Nothing at all. To ask for such reports 
from patrons is ridiculous. 

Down in Alabama a small bakery has posted a sign that 
truly leaves one in doubt as to the quality of its loaves. It 
reads: “Please do not handle the bread as it is not sanitary.” 

Many persons are said to visit the little store just to read the 
sign and chuckle. 

But no Paducahan need travel far to gaze upon a signboard 
that is equally ambiguous—depending, of course, .upon how you 
look at things. There is a barber shop in this city which tells 
passersby exactly this: “Shoes shhined inside.” Pondering these 
words; the thought suggests itself that perhaps this is a new fad. 


68 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


Shining shoes is all right, but shining them on the inside is 
positively a new wrinkle. 

This recalls the western farmer who was amazed when he 
saw the word “Cafe” over nearly every restaurant door at the 
Chicago exposition back in 1893. He thought, doncherno, that 
“Cafe” was the name of the owner! 

The church announcements of a Paducah newspaper once 
carried the startling information that in a particularly attentive 
Sunday school “we strive to inoculate Scripture!” Think of 
threatening children with inoculation—little boys and girls who 
have done no harm and who try to be just as good as they can 
despite such “Christian” ethics. The word “impart” would have 
conveyed the probable meaning, even thought it sacrificed the 
“suffer little children” motif. 

About two years ago a policeman hailed a tramp who was 
fleeing down one of the principal streets of New Orleans. 
“Here! Where did you steal that rug from?” And the tramp 
answered: “I didn’t steal it. A lady up the street gave it to 

me and told me to beat it.” However, he was not allowed to 
proceed. 

But for the chair of paradox one might safely raffle an oak 
leather chair exhibited in a mail order catalog sent out from 
Chicago. Under an illustration of the comfortable chair are 
these words: “Showing footrest concealed.” If the footrest is 
“concealed,” how could it be “showing,” and vice versa? That 
is almost as ambiguous as a sign in a Denver store about five 
years ago: “During the flu epidemic we will not change 

underwear.” The word “exchange” would have clarified things 
and been of more interest to the public. But that is nothing. In 
Paducah there is a store that among other things sells “sta¬ 
tionary”—whatever that is! 

Many years ago a street fakir in Sheboygan was giving his 
medicated voice to the sale of cough medicine. In one part of 
his discourse, he said that “thousands of persons would rise and 
acclaim the merits of Doperine if they were alive to tell the tale 
today.” 

This reminds one of the advertisement a gentleman placed 
in a Gary, Ind., paper. “I will not be responsible for any debts 
contracted only by myself.” From the wording of that ad it is 
clear he had no confidence in his shopping ability. A hint for 
choirmasters is given in the Blairstown (Iowa) Banner, in the 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


69 


following sentence: “The choir at the Park Avenue church 
Sunday was full and the music was excellent.” 

But going back to signs, here is one: “Our eggs are like 
Caesar’s wife.” It was a nifty, but not original, way of telling 
the public the eggs were above suspicion—if that was the 
meaning intended. It would be unkind to suspect that the late J. 
Caesar’s spouse was expensive in the least. In a Pennsylvania 
cemetery this sign is near the entrance: “Persons are prohibited 
picking flowers except from their own graves.” 

The Bloomington Bulletin had the word “Many” instead of 
“Much” in a headline several years ago, and it created quite a 
bit of talk. The head reads: “Farmers -Sell Many New Oats.” A 
revised notion of the occupational zero might be counting oats. 
But that is not ambiguous. More than likely it is tiresome. 
However, a certain church in Michigan promises to have a 
number of dances which the daily paper announces are to start at 
once. “The series of dinner dances,” the paper says, “will be 
given with a view to bringing the members closer together.” 
Well, that looks like a workable scheme, all night. It is 
equivocal in the extreme—the sentence is. 

The Little Bohemia restaurant in Racine gives fair warning 
that “you will never eat another Sunday dinner at home if you 
try one of ours.” Such candor reminds one of the notice a 
dentist inserted in an Alabama paper. It read: “As the State 
Dental Association meets April 7 to 12, my office will be closed 
for the entire week. This is for the public’s benefit.” 

A woman went to the proprietor of a wallpaper store and 
said: “I want some paper to put on myself two-thirds of the 

way up.” That remark was very much like the advertisement 
which read: “The greatest floor enamel ever made. You can 
put it on yourself.” In other words, you do not take it internally. 

The Wisconsin State-Journal had the following sentence, 
which easily admits of more than one meaning. “Air. Pickering 
has been pastor here for twenty-eight years, and thus is the 
longest Baptist pastor in Wisconsin.” Alaybe he was the person 
who advertised for sleeping quarters, thus: “Wanted, an airy 
bed-room for a gentleman 22 feet long, and 11 feet wide. 

But of want ads capable of double interpretation there is 
no end. Alost of them are just so owing to incorrect use of the 
comma, the semicolon, or the period, and quite frequently the 
absence of all of these. Lok at this one appearing recently 


70 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


in a Paducah paper: “Bulldog for sale; will eat anything; very 
fond of children.” And still some people wonder why they 
cannot dispose of their property when they advertise that way. 
To herald those likeable qualities of a bulldog—“will eat any¬ 
thing and fond of children”—were equal to wishing a lion upon 
someone who borrowed your bonnet and failed to return it. 

Words are treacherous, tricky thihngs, bear in mind. Three 
or four, arranged in one way or another, may precipitate a war, 
a divorce scandal, or a riot at a christening. They must be 
watched very closely when put in advertising, else their effectual 
virtues are lost and probable hurt done. Then, again, do not 
say too much. Rather say too little, than forget the law of 
diminishing returns. One man who was long on details, but 
short on ideas, failed to sell a couple bronchos simply 
because he said too much. Here is the way he advertised: “For 
Sale—Pair of broncho horses. Good weight, sound, broken. 
Owner in hospital.” It sounds like a joke, but it went through 
that way. By advertising for a gymnast or even a boy of 
“parts,” a Cairo baker could have shortened his ad and been 
more explicit. His ad read: “Wanted—A boy to be partly out¬ 
side and partly inside the counter.” 

A Fort Wayne paper carried this advertisement: “Widow in 
comfortable circumstances wishes to marry two 30 ns.” Since this 
practice is prohibited in the Hoosier state, it is quite probable 
the lady had two sons and simply wished to wed one man. 
The person taking the want ad should have helped her out. Not 
so much by marrying her—or by being married to her—but in 
mitigating her position by dropping a period after the word 
“marry.” Some years ago a dog and pony show became stranded in 
Lexington. To meet obligations and avoid controversies, the 
company decided to sell the canines and ponies and advertised 
thhus: “Anmal sale now on. don’t go elsewhere to be cheated; 

come here.” 

An indianapolis paper had a rather dubious announcement 
reading: “Mr. Jones, furrier, begs to announce that he will 

make up gowns, caps, etc., for ladies out of their own skins.” 
It was like the ad that ran in the Bennettsville (S. C) Pee Dee 
Advocate: For Sale—A few pair of blankets made from my own 
wool. Price, $10 per pair.” 

Hundreds of close readers of the Texas Stockman and 
Farmer will no doubt recall an ad which ran conspicuously among 


71 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 

the best reading matter: “If you have money, lands or estates 
due you anywhere, write L. Blaton, Attorney, Denton, Texas, and 
he will get it.” 

An elderly farmer hitched his team to a telegraph post. 
“Here,” exclaimed a policeman, “you can’t hitch there!” “Can’t 
hitch!” shouted the irate farmer. “Well, why have you a sign 
up, ‘Fine for hitching?’ ” The St. Louis Post-Dispatch is author¬ 
ity for a story about a university professor there, who in a lecture 
before the Academy of Science, told of a printer who could “set 
type with one eye and read proof with the other.” Perhaps it has 
never occurred to you, but setting type with the eye instead of 
the hand is quite a feat. 

Bill Smith, a country storekeeper in the mountains of eastern 
Kentucky, went to the city to buy goods. The merchandise was 
sent immediately, and reached home before he did. When the 
boxes were delivered Mrs. Smith, who was running the store, 
uttered a scream, seized a hatchet and began frantically to open 
the largest one. “Wliat's the matter, Sarah?” said one of the 
bystanders, who had watched her in amazement. Pale and faint, 
Mrs. Smith pointed to an inscription on the box. It read: “Bill 
inside.” The story recalls the backwoods farmer who was aboard 
a train for the first time and misinterpreted the conductor’s 
warning. “Look out!” yelled the conductor, “we’re going through 
a tunnel.” W T hereupon the farmer put his head out of the 
window to his sorrow. 

Some time ago a young man gallantly escorted his Boston 
hostess to the table. “May I,” he asked, “sit on your right 
hand?” To which she replied, “No, I have to eat with that. 
You’d better take a chair.” A joke probably started from the 
incident. It is to the effect that a man had his eye on a seat in 
a street car and a young woman entered and sat on it. 

The old Paducah News once carried a want ad that was 
puzzling to some. It was classified under “Wanted,” and here 
is what it said: “Salesmen—Ambitious, desiring association with 
highly endorsed proposition; real estate experience essential but 
not necessary.” In other words, just come as you are. 

An Evans (Pa.) paper had this one: “Wanted—Odd jobs 
of carpentering for a competent and worthy man of the com¬ 
munity. Call the pastor if you need such a workman.” 

With prohibition in effect, can you understand why any 
person asking for a position will boast in print that he will 


72 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


violate the Volstead edict should he have an opportunity? It 
seems inconceivable, but here is the way a young fellow goes 
after a position via the Memphis Commercial Appeal classified 
columns: “Young man wants position as stenographer; speedy; 

reliable; don’t drink; can start at once.” Not much use of 
starting now, friend. 

This is from the want column of a New York daily: “Japan¬ 
ese woman wants washing.” Poor butterfly. 

A leading advertiser came running into a newspaper office 
and in heavy and disgusted tones said to the advertising manager: 
“What’s the matter with your paper, anyway? That was a fine 
mess you made of my add yesterday.” The trduble was not 
readily discerned. “Read it and see,” said the advertiser as he 
thrust a copy of the paper into the advertising manager’s hands. 
And he read, “If you want to have a fit, wear Jinks’ shoes.” The 
same complainant and advertiser is reported to have had a card 
in his window, reading: “Brown’s Rubber Heels; fifty cents 
attached.” But no one ever found a half dollar clinging to them. 

A schoolgirl was sitting with her feet stretched far out intc. 
the aisle, and was busily chewing gum, when the teacher espied 
her. “Mary!” called the teacher sharply. “Yes, ma’am?” ques¬ 
tioned the pupil. “Take that gum out of your mouth and put 
your feet in!” was the command, difficult to obey. This recalls 
the remark of a clerkyman’s wife who warned him as he went 
off to officiate at a funeral one rainy day: “Now, John, don’t 
stand with your bare head on the damp ground, you’ll catch 
cold.” 

At a meeting one night an Irishman got up and said: “I 
propose that we build a new schoolhouse, and that we build 
it in the place where the old one is; and I propose that we leave 
the old schoolhouse standing until the new one is up, and that w*e 
use the stones of the old schoolhouse to build the new one.” The 
suggestion was something like the story about Pat. He was 
driving along the street when his old horse fell and did not try 
to get up. “Git up, git up from there, ye lazy critter,” said Pat. 
“Git up, I tell ye, or I’ll drive right over ye!” 

During the World war an Owensboro paper had a headline 
on its first page that was somewhat doubtful and rather dubious, 
quite indistinct and certainly puzzling. It was this: “Food 
Needs Pressing in Belgian Territory.” The food did not need 
pressing, surely, for what housewife has not a rolling pin? The 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


73 


Martinsville (W. Y.) Bulletin is credited with running this 
advertisement: “Wanted—A boy to deliver oysters that can 

ride on a bicycle.” If one wishes to comment on that, he might 
say oysters that can ride on a bicycle ought to do well in 
vaudeville. They excel trained flees. The advertisement is as 
ambiguous as the old sentence. “A carload of bricks came in for 
a walk through the park.” 

It is easy to misconstrue the meaning of a sentence when 
punctuation is lacking. “The prisoner said the lawyer was an 
escape convict,” reads contrary to the same combination of 
words when spaced by two commas, as: “The prisoner, said the 
lawyer, was an escaped convict.” 

Children often encounter long words whose meaning they 
do not understand. It is more than likely they do not know 
what “ambiguity” means. Parents and guardians might impress 
the meaning more clearly by telling the story of the man who 
desired to purchase a Pullman berth. 

“Upper or lower?” asked the agent. 

“What’s the difference?” inquired the man. 

“A difference of fifty cents in this case,” replied the agent. 
And then he explained: 

“The lower is higher than the upper. The higher price is 
for the lower. If you want it lower you will have to go higher. 
We sell the upper lower than the lower. In other words, the 
higher the lower. Most persons don’t like the upper, although 
it is lower on account of it being higher. When you ocupy an 
upper you have to get up to go to bed and get down when you 
get up. You can have the lower if you pay higher. The upper is 
lower than the lower because it is higher. If you are willing to 
go higher, it will be lower.” 


74 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


CHAPTER X 

CHEER UP AT FORTY! 

T HERE is an accepted belief among many people that when 
a person has reached middle life—say forty—the time for 
building character or achieving fame lies behind. The period of 
youth is certainly the most important in that the foundation for 
future accomplishments is laid then, but that man or woman is 
foolish who despairs of life at two-score years simply because 
the pinnacle of success has not been reached and wealth is not 
prodigal at the feet. 

One might very properly speak of a life of forty years as 
being the perfect day of maturity, nor need there be repining 
that one cannot rekindle the morning beams of childhood or recall 
as clearly as could be wished the noontide glory of youth. As 
the evening rays of age gleam in the shadowy horizon, it is given 
to every person to cherish that goodness which is the sweetness 
of childhood, th joy of youth, the strength of maturity, the 
honor of old age, the bliss of saints. Youth has its advantages, 
old age has its blessings. A French proverb conveys the thought 
here in mind—“If only youth had the knowledge, if only age had 
the power.” 

It will surprise the average reader to learn that quite often 
the most enduring work of an individual has been done even 
after the fortieth year has been added to by twenty more. 
Someone has even gone so far as to say a person's lasting 
achievements are registered in most instances when man or 
woman is past sixty well on the way to seventy. Indeed, in an 
investigation of 600 of the most important scientists, statesman 
and old-world famous men and women it was found that only 
5 per cent of them accomplished their world’s work before the 
age of forty, 10 per cent between forty and fifty, and 20 per cent 
between fifty and sixty. Thirty-five per cent accomplished their 
life’s aim between seventy and eighty, while 9 per cent actually 
did their best work after attaining the good old age of eighty. 
This should give some encouragement to the person in middle 
life who inwardly feels that his or her life’s star has reached its 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


75 


perihelion and decline is imminent. It is well to remember a 
person is as old as he feels, and no one should be swayed by 
false sentiment. 

Daniel Defoe wrote nothing more readable or entertaining 
than “Robinson Crusoe,” his masterpiece written at the age of 

sixty. At forty Ulysses S. Grant, later president of the United 

States, was idling about the streets of Galena, Ill., with no 

occupation and was generally regarded by the prosperous citizens 
of that town as a worthless sort of person. Benjamin Franklin 
did not commence his philosophical pursuits until he had reached 
his fiftieth year, and Ogilvie, the translater of Homer and Virgil, 
was unacquainted with Latin and Greek till he was past fifty. 
Even Colbert, the famous French minister, at sixty years of age 
returned to his Latin and law studies. 

John Wesley preached on an average of fifteen sermons a 
week. Instead of breaking down under it, he wrote in his 

seventy-third year that he was far more able to preach than 
when twenty-three! The Salvation Army vras not founded by 
William Booth until he had reached the age of forty-nine. At 
forty John Bunyan first received his license to preach, and he Was 
forty-seven before “The Pilgrim’s Progress” began to appear in 
print. At forty-nine Oliver Cromwell was seriously contemplating 
emigrating to America as a farmer. 

Accareo, a great lawyer upon being asked why he began 
the study of law so late, replied, that indeed he began it late, 
but he should therefore master it sooner! It was not until Julius 
Caesar was fory-one that he became a general and began one of 
the most illustrious military careers in history. Napoleon was 
forty when he was hailed the Emperor of the French, just in the 
very prime of life. 

Marshall Foch approached seventy when he was commander- 
in-chief of the allied armies in the World War. Blucher was 
seventy-two at Waterloo, where he turned the tide. King William 
of Prussia was seventy-three during the War of 1870, and Field 
Marshal von Moltke was seventy at the same period. De Villars 
was eighty when he triumphantly invaded Italy. 

Dryden and Scott were both forty before they became known 
as authors. At forty-six after an heroic struggle against penury, 
Dr. Samuel Johnson succeeded in publishing his dictionary of 
the English language. H. G. Wells was fifty-four when his 
popular “Outline of History” appeared, and Chauncey M. Depew’s 


76 


YOUTH AND OTHER THINGS 


“Memories” come from a mind eighty-six years old. Harriet 
Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” appeared in book form 
when she was “just forty.” 

Socrates at an extreme old age learned to play on musical 
instruments. Cato was eighty years old when he began to learn 
the Greek language and Petrarch was just ten years younger 
when he commenced the study of Latin. 

Who complains of being old, a sort of “has been,” useless 
and worn out, at forty? Bah! See Ludovico writing the memoirs 
of his own time at the great age of one hundred and fifteen! 
“Back to Methuselah!” cries George Bernard Shaw. Nobody 
should be old at forty; many people are dishearteningly lazy 
before. 

Come, all you who have that tired, despondent, remorseful 
feeling at forty. 'Oliver Weldell Holmes is here in spirit and the 
shade of the lovable autocrat will lead in song—- 

“We’re twenty! We’re twenty! Who says we are more? 

He's tipsy,—young jackanapes!—Show him the door! 

‘Gray temples at twenty?'—Yes! white if you please; 

Where the snowflakes fall thickest there’s nothing can freeze.” 




























